Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Kelly, you talked about one of the municipalities having an unfunded liability. I want to bring this back to the federal--since this is a federal committee. I want to quote Greg Hurst of Benefits Canada, because I think it's important.
...truth is that the federal government took steps more than 10 years ago to rein in the growing value of the Superannuation Account and improve management of its unfunded pension obligations. Both employer and employee contributions for pensions in respect of service after March 31, 2000, are invested by the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, and the latest reports of the Chief Actuary show that those pension obligations are fully funded with modest surpluses. ... Thus, there is no crisis of unfunded pension obligations for the federal public service.
The other point I'd like to make is that Environics will tell you that the average public sector pension is $18,000 a year. I think it's important to put that on the record because of the fact that yes, there are unfunded liabilities across the nation, and I'm not disputing that with you, but I just think it is very important.
Mr. Wrobel, I'll come back to you for a second. Neil Mohindra of the Fraser Institute is not necessarily a good friend of the NDP, so I point that out. He said,
The unnecessary compliance costs associated with the new regime will make it difficult for PRPPs to be offered to employers at a lower cost than existing types of group plans. This completely defeats the purpose behind the creation of PRPPs.
One wonders why we would have another voluntary private sector plan at all.