I was making reference to the criticism of the criticism, because the PBO said he didn't know what people were talking about, that the OAS is sustainable. Well, people like me and Jack Mintz never said it was unsustainable.
The issue is not whether it's going to bankrupt Canada. Of course it's not going to bankrupt Canada. We're an enormously wealthy country. I'm saying that as someone who travels around the world teaching over 100 times in developing countries. I'm going to be in Poland in August and China in October. We are fabulously wealthy.
My point was that it obscures the fact that resources are scarce and when you, the decision-makers and the parliamentarians, have a choice between using—and I called it “squandering”—public resources on something that's less essential versus more essential, you should always focus on the more essential and not the less essential. That was my fundamental point.
Again, I do want to thank the clerk of the committee for being able to get these slides to you. Take a look at page 9. It's from Jack Mintz, but in turn it is based on Finance Canada's income replacement percentages. In my paper on how Ottawa spends—which hasn't yet been physically published—I argued that there are really two pension systems in this country and people don't really realize it. We think this is one big pension system. I've said that we have a public pension system for people in the bottom two quintiles. I said that empirically and statistically they receive most of their income in retirement from OAS, GIS, and CPP.That's an empirical statement, whether we like it or not, whereas the top three quintiles, which is the top, the upper-middle, and the middle, receive declining.... Look at that graph on page 9. You get down to people in the top quintile and it's 10% of their income.
My point is that we have de facto—not legally but de facto—two different pension systems. One is for low-income people, which I define as the bottom two quintiles, who absolutely need the public system. I'm not suggesting taking away it from them. In fact, I'm suggesting giving them more, and taking it away from university professors, NGO, union and corporate leaders, and Conrad Black, and high-income people, who shouldn't be getting OAS.