Mr. Carney, in your remarks with regard to the United States situation, you walked us through some of the lessons of the past year, some of the things we've learned and some of the things that are being corrected, one would hope, toward the future.
You referred to the insistence of the governor of the French bank that we have to get away from some of the risk-taking practices of the past, which he sees as creeping back in. It can fairly be said that President Sarkozy of France, both on the issue of tax havens and on the issue of these past practices, is taking a leading role. He was very happy after his first G-20 meeting with President Obama, because the issue of tax havens, which you talked about correctly before, was dealt with.
One of the things that we find here in government, if this whole exercise is to have a purpose.... You correctly refer also to the difference between what you have to do as the governor of our central bank and what the minister and his department have to do and what we all have to do as parliamentarians, who are supposed to give form to all these nice thoughts in legislation. What other things should we also be looking at?
Mr. Menzies referred to the work Mr. Jenkins is doing on pensions. I think there is something that cuts across party lines that we can be doing better to protect pensions, and that long term has a lot to do with the stability of our economy and the quality of life of our society. But what are some of the other things that we can and should be looking at?
For example, is it possible to look at the simple objective fact that many executive pay packages are now 250 to 300 times the wage per year of the average salaried employee? Should there be a fiduciary responsibility placed on members of the governing boards of corporate entities to make sure that when they are determining remuneration, global pay packages, it should be based on value added to the company, not pure speculation on the future? Is there something that we can be doing, as legislators, to bring that sort of legislation forward and better protect future generations with regard to the institutions that have shown to be, in many cases, quite fragile?