Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for coming here this morning.
Mr. Hodgson, I want to go to you first. I agree with your analysis that we need to invest in human capital. You talked about infrastructure, which I'll touch on in just a second, and tax reform. I guess I agree—I think we all agree—with much of your analysis of what has to be done, but you know, I come from private business, and when we used to have a spreadsheet, we would always talk about income but we'd focus our attention more on the expenses. You can get all this stuff coming in, but if the back door is open and everything is blowing out the back door, you're kind of defeating the purpose.
I'm surprised—it's not a criticism, I'm just surprised—that no one has mentioned what I think is probably the biggest gravy-train wreck that's approaching us, and that's what's happening in terms of pensions down the road.
Mr. Hodgson, you talked about infrastructure. I would submit to you—this is my own observation, but I think I could probably get a lot of support for this—that especially for municipalities, and the same thing is true with both levels of government, federal and provincial, they have costs coming down the road that are so astronomical that they don't have a problem with income so much as those problems.
Take a city like London. It's a good example. I think the top ten wage earners in London will cost the city $240 million in ten years' time.
I know this government has struggled with that. We've introduced measures to help correct that. Let's face it, in this country we have a two-tier pension system. We talk about health care, and we don't like the health care tiers, but we have the same thing there. We have those who are lucky enough to work for either the public sector or maybe a few corporations, and then the 65% who don't.
Do you think that is an issue? I'll start with Mr. Hodgson, and then maybe we'll go to Mr. Effer after that, and Ms. Campbell as well—not that I'm excluding the other two gentlemen, but I don't know if I'm going to have time—on the efforts that have been made by the government to begin to correct that. Are the efforts sufficient? And where do we need to go so that we don't run off the tracks?
Mr. Hodgson.