Thank you, Mr. Chair. I apologize for being late.
Thank you for coming today. I want to talk about a couple things that happened to me. One is that I had a teacher named Evan Douglas during my MBA who taught me economics. The first day of economics, he took a dart board, placed it against a wall, took about 10 darts, and threw them. Most hit the board. Then he said, “You take all of the investment funds and go through them, and you will get the same return that I just did by throwing at the dart board.”
He has written a couple of books on economics. I was quite impressed with that. He said the major reason the darts would have the same return was because of the risk, and making sure that you spread the risk around. Mr. Skerrett and Mr. Benson, is that correct? Well, that's the reason that increasing CPP, to me, does not make the most sense. All the eggs in one basket comes to mind, and I think that's the major reason I say this.
The one thing about the Australian super funds is that the returns quoted in the APRA report are for the total assets of a super fund, rather than the different investment options. It might be interesting for you to know that between 2004 and 2008, 33% of those super funds received 9% return, and over 10% returned double-digit returns. That was, of course, before the global economic collapse. It's interesting to see that, because those returns are satisfactory indeed.
I'm proud to say I'm from Fort McMurray, and I think we have more union members there than anywhere else in the country. One of the major problems in Fort McMurray was the ability to compete with the union companies up there—the large companies. I worked as a lawyer there. I did divorces for many people. Usually people's pensions were the last thing they had. In fact, they were unable to save any other way. Employers made contributions, as the employee did. They were proud of that and quite savvy about what they had in pensions, because of the reporting requirements.
I also operated about 10 businesses there: a Quiznos, a car wash, a printing shop. I could not keep employees. The reason was that I couldn't compete on the pensions. I could compete on the wages, but I could not compete on the pensions. I looked for a Chamber of Commerce fund. I enrolled in there for two years, but it became too difficult to have pensions collected.
I have to tell you that as a small businessman who employs many middle- and lower-income people in the service industry and the retail sector, this is very welcome to me.
Mr. Benson, whom do you see this possibility benefiting the most?