First of all, on behalf of the Canadian Labour Congress and its 3.2 million members, we thank the committee again for affording us the opportunity to make our presentation today.
The CLC calls on the federal government to address three key issues in the next budget: pensions, employment insurance, and of course jobs.
Our priorities are to overhaul our national pension system through a package of measures, including a doubling of the Canada Pension Plan and the introduction of a national system of pension insurance. As a first step, the budget should increase the guaranteed income supplement to a level sufficient to eliminate poverty among the elderly in Canada. The federal government should convene a summit on pensions, including provincial and territorial governments, employers, labour, and others, to develop a concrete national action plan on pension reform.
Second, improve income security for unemployed workers and help hard-hit communities by introducing a uniform national entrance requirement of 360 hours for employment insurance; raise benefits from 55% to 60% of previous earnings; and extend benefits for at least 50 weeks in all regions.
Third, launch a major, multi-year public investment program to save and create jobs; introduce support for public infrastructure development; and expand public services, energy conservation and renewable energy projects, and support for industrial restructuring.
Since the current global and Canadian recession began last October, almost 500,000 full-time jobs have been lost as a result of the manufacturing and forestry sector crisis. Canada faces an acute social and poverty crisis as hundreds of thousands of workers who are unemployed through no fault of their own begin to exhaust their EI benefits. The crisis has also had a devastating impact on retirement savings and pensions of millions of Canadians.
On the issue of pensions, the crisis has exposed major faults in the heart of our pension system. Our public pensions--old age security, OAS, the guaranteed income supplement, GIS, plus the Canada Pension Plan, CPP--provide a secure income in retirement, but the maximum value of pensions falls well short of replacing the 50% to 70% of pre-retirement income needed to maintain living standards.
Meanwhile, the private part of our pension system is in deep trouble. Only about one in five workers in the private sector now belongs to an employer pension plan. RRSPs were sold as the solution to our pension woes, but the average older worker approaching retirement today has saved enough to buy a monthly pension of only about $250 per month. A disturbing number of vulnerable seniors, especially single women, still live in poverty.
The labour movement believes that Canadians should not fend for themselves in retirement. We call for a national summit of governments, employers, labour, and others to discuss and bring forward a concrete plan to rebuild and reform our pension system. Our priorities for change are a major shift from private to public pensions and greater security for members of existing employer pension plans. The changes we propose will benefit all workers and provide greater security while making our overall pension system better fit the needs of a changing economy.
We call for the doubling of benefits under the Canada Pension Plan from 25% to 50%. We call for an immediate increase in the guaranteed income supplement to eliminate poverty among the elderly. The guarantee should provide for pension benefits to a proposed maximum of $2,500 per month through a system funded by contributions from pension plan sponsors.
On the question of employment insurance, EI is a critically important program for Canadian workers, especially at a time of nearly double-digit unemployment. Laid-off workers need adequate benefits to support themselves and their families. Improving EI is an efficient form of economic stimulus that can help maintain hard-hit communities and economies. Our EI program leaves far too many Canadians, especially women and lower-wage insecure workers, out in the cold.
We call for a uniform entrance requirement of 360 hours of work across the country so that more workers are qualified if they are laid off.