Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to say to Mr. Farmer that I'm a former Bell Canada employee who is not collecting a pension—just to put that on the record.
It struck me as interesting, because when I look across the table—and perhaps I'll leave Mr. Sproule out of this—this is a group of people who are representing people in general who are somewhat more affluent.
Yesterday the National Pensioners and Senior Citizens Federation met with some of the NDP caucus members, and we talked about the fact that 63% of working Canadians have no pension and have no savings at this point in time.
So I understand, Mr. Perkin, when you talk about the flexibilities and all those things, but most of these people are in a position where perhaps some discipline might be in order to help them.
Talking about the public side of the stool, you've heard from the Liberal Party when they talk about their supplementary plan. The NDP's proposition is very similar to some others: we propose a doubling of CPP. Again, as Mr. Wallace has pointed out, that will take a long time. We're suggesting that 2.5% of the employer side and 2.5% from the employee side would make that happen.
The major thing is the fact that, if it's not mandatory, we're not going to reach the end goal of protecting those lower-income Canadians who have nothing at this point.
The other thing we see as value to what we're talking about is that you have in the CPP plan an administration that has been, to all intents and purposes, fairly successful over the years and has built up the assets. If we incorporated those premiums directly into the core assets of CPP and managed by them in that form, you would not have the added administration that the Liberals are proposing here.
Being mandatory, I think, is to the benefit of the workers. They're going to have at least that founding stool. If they do find themselves later in life with the extra assets to carry forward to invest elsewhere, God bless them; more power to them.
I would like Mr. Perkin and Ms. Eng to respond to the thoughts on the mandatory versus the voluntary.