Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for coming this morning.
First of all, I just want to say that as a former president of a chamber of commerce and a former CFIB member, I'm quite familiar with your organizations and a lot of the work you do. In my previous role, Kevin, I know we talked a lot about energy efficiency. Those are a couple of the things I'd like to talk about.
I'd like to follow up where Mr. McCauley left off on the Canada Pension Plan contributions.
As someone who is technically a senior and someone who lives in a riding that has a good number of seniors—and the housing issue comes up in terms of affordable housing with seniors as well—I take some exception to the increases being called a tax. I see them as an investment. As we see defined contribution plans fall and defined benefit plans fall, we see seniors coming into a time when they're not able to make ends meet. Yes, it is a short time frame in terms of ramping up, but the reality is that we have to do something.
For those of us on the ground in our communities, we see the results of seniors not being able to afford to stay in their own homes. One of the things we're very excited about—and I know my colleague here, the parliamentary secretary, worked very hard on this—is that we now have a Minister of Seniors, and that minister will take into account a number of these things, the Canada Pension Plan being one.
In exchange for those higher premiums are higher benefits, and the numbers are significant. I think we have to remember what the goal is. It's not a tax; I see it as an investment.
I think the other thing we need to remember is that these increases will also come into effect to support survivors; the survivor's benefit will be increased, as will the disability benefit. As an entrepreneur, as a small business owner myself, I know we all struggle from time to time—there's absolutely no question—but I guess we all have to make decisions about what's important. I would like to get some help as we go through this process in changing some of the language around what it is we're talking about.