That's rubbish.
Evidence of meeting #6 for Finance in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cpp.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #6 for Finance in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cpp.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
4:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Canadian Association of Retired Persons
I'm sorry, which question are you referring to?
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
It's question 14:
If a Supplementary pension system existed in Canada, would you voluntarily contribute to it?
My question to that is, based on what you've said today, that CARP is supporting a mandatory system, is it because the response rate that you got here wasn't high enough that you think you need to make it mandatory?
4:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Canadian Association of Retired Persons
No, we do not try to manipulate our polls. We just report them as they come back.
The point here, in question 14 that you're referring to, indicates that they personally do not need to contribute to a supplementary plan because they're already retired. That reinforces our point that our members, while retired, are not benefiting, are not seeing benefit for themselves out of any kind of reform, but are nonetheless offering the benefit of their experience for other people, and they recognize the needs and challenges they face in retirement.
However, in terms of the reliability of our surveys, this is not meant to be a professionally made survey. It is a sampling of the views of our membership, which is very highly educated, engaged, and understands the very specific questions that we ask in the surveys.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
I'm not disagreeing. Based on their income levels, and so on, they are probably pretty sophisticated folks. I understand that.
So you're not basing CARP's decision-making on a plan on this type of survey, but rather on other—
4:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Canadian Association of Retired Persons
We present to our membership what we hope to be a well-reasoned advocacy position based on the research we have and the circumstances, and we get feedback from our membership, which is unlike many stakeholder groups who make the decision for the members. We try to give them feedback as to what their numbers are telling us as well.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Okay.
We've heard from the Canadian Labour Congress, which I thought had a similar approach to what you've said in terms of a secondary CPP plan, or whatever you want to call it, a pension plan—
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Right.
They admitted to us after a while, after some discussion, that it would take a fairly long time for it to get paid up, in a sense, so that people would actually benefit from it. Does your plan have the same issue?
4:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Canadian Association of Retired Persons
That is the nature of pensions. You do not start benefiting from the first dollar you contribute. It does take a working lifetime, a career, to actually get a full pension.
That's true of MP pensions as well. Even though people are criticizing it for being gold-plated, in fact you had to serve for 25 years to get a full pension. That's the same for any other workplace pension. You do have to work through the working career.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
We're hearing lots of issues about pensions today, about people today. Your plan would not necessarily help anybody today. Is that correct?
4:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Canadian Association of Retired Persons
No, but the future comes along pretty quickly. In this circumstance, people have to start saving now in order to have their money in place for their own retirement. If we don't start today, then it's going to be another 35 years.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
I don't disagree with you there, Ms. Eng, but to be fair, so that we all have the right information, in your definition of the future, is it 20 years before we start seeing results?
4:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Canadian Association of Retired Persons
That's right. For the supplementary pension, it's going to take that time. If your government is interested in helping people today, then you can increase the OAS and GIS right away.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
You also mention in your presentation a pension summit. What would its purpose be? Is it for you to present your views, or have you made up your mind as a group, as an organization? What would the summit result be?
4:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Canadian Association of Retired Persons
The importance of a pension summit is so that all the people who have the authority to make changes—that is, all the finance ministers at all levels of government—have to be around the table and have to concentrate on finding solutions. But at such a summit, there should be representation of knowledgeable representatives of retirees in particular, because those are the people whose futures will be most affected by the changes.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Another interesting piece that we heard so far through these sessions was about multi-employer pension plans. I think you indicated that they were poor performers. I think you said that, but I'm not sure.
Can you tell me why you think they're poor performers? Is there a way to make them better performers, or what's your interpretation?
4:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Canadian Association of Retired Persons
No, there is an opportunity to use multi-employer pension plans. They have had some poor performance, mostly because there is a diffusion of accountability. Once you have multiple groups in there, the difficulty is that none of them are in charge.
It is one option. It's not one that we rule out. We do accept the fact that there should be many different options. The model we present is meant just to frame the issue that there has to be some kind of filling of the gap of people who are not saving enough for their retirement.
Many options can be put on the table, but the current status quo is not enough.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
I have one really quick question. I saw in the survey, I think, 6% as a contribution rate. That was for the voluntary program.
If you had a mandatory system, what would the contribution rate be for individuals and for—
4:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Canadian Association of Retired Persons
The 6% was simply to test our members' acceptance of the idea of doubling or increasing the CPP contributions at this time.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
4:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Canadian Association of Retired Persons
Actually, in terms of making sure that we have a 70% replacement rate, if you have full coverage to $122,000 of income, the total, including CPP, would be close to about 19%.
