All right. I guess we can read between the lines on our own.
Turning to a more serious issue, we in the Liberal Party have come out in favour of a supplementary Canada pension plan, and I notice that both the insurance companies and the banking association oppose that. We were driven to that partly because the management fees charged for the management of funds by the private sector are two or three percentage points per year, depending on the asset class, and are said to be among the highest in the OECD, whereas under a public pension system, like the Canada Pension Plan, the cost is a small fraction of that.
One of the drivers toward the supplementary Canada pension plan is the very high cost charged by the private sector. So when the private sector says don't worry, don't duplicate us, the point is that the vehicle we are proposing would be at a very much lower cost to Canadians than what the private sector is currently charging.
I'd like to ask both the bankers' association and the life insurers why we can't do both. We are proposing a supplementary Canada pension plan. You don't like that because it competes with yours. You are proposing, and both of you said something similar here, to “allow pension plans that are de-linked from the employment relationship, and allow for multi-sponsor or third party plans open to a wider range of membership”.
The bankers and the life insurers proposed that. I have nothing against that. Life insurers are already allowed to manage such pension plans under Ontario pension plan law. If there are impediments to those I think we should remove them.
My point is, why not let 1,000 flowers bloom? Why not allow consumers more choice? Have a supplementary Canada pension plan with which the private sector would have to compete and have multi-employer pension plans with which the public sector would have to compete. Why do you insist on cutting off additions to the public sector pension plan and having them exclusively private? Why can't we have a mix of both and give Canadians a broader range of choice?