Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you, committee members, for the opportunity to join you this afternoon. I've been following this piece of legislation very closely. I came from a small business background before I got elected. I want to share a story with you and ask our guests, our witnesses today, to comment on it.
Before I got elected to Parliament, I ran an association in Toronto for owners of apartment buildings, and there were only two people on staff. There was me, as the executive director, and I had one administrative person who worked with me. We had a heck of a time figuring out how we were going to get a pension system for two employees. Nobody would touch us. They were not interested; it's too costly. It doesn't make any sense to have it for two people. We couldn't pool with anybody else. We looked into chamber of commerce plans, as Mr. Jean mentioned, and all this other stuff. It was way too complicated.
Doesn't this proposal meet the objective for those employers, those very small companies, with two, three, four employees, so that they can now create a pooled registered pension program? Two employees can contribute to it as long as they work there. The employer would also have the option to top up, to put their contribution in...as well as the one I clearly would have put in if I had had that option, if I were still working there. We'd be jumping all over this kind of a plan, because it's flexible. It's another tool in the toolkit. It makes a lot of sense I think for those very small businesses that have two to five employees, as well as self-employed people who may not have another option because they can't participate.
I don't know who wants to jump in on that. Is that not the audience we're trying to target with this new plan, a new tool, something extra that we have, those companies and those employees who work in those businesses so they can finally have an employer-employee contributed pension program?
Who wants to jump in on that?
Go ahead, Mr. Benson, if you wish.