Thank you.
I think perhaps the best way to address your comments and questions is to give a sense of the consensus that we had in June when we got together with our provincial counterparts. We had clearly a number of provinces that had continued working on a potential Canada Pension Plan enhancement for a number of years. This is not a new discussion. Canadians have recognized for a long time that with the changing nature of work, with the increased longevity of all of us, which is positive, and with the lower interest rate environment we're in right now, retirement security is more at risk than it has been in previous generations.
Ontario, as one of those provinces, put forward an approach to deal with retirement security in Ontario, but they were very open to a national solution, as the other provinces were. Their view, as well as that of the other provinces around the table, and our view was that one of the strengths we have in Canada in our retirement system is that it's a national system. It's a system whereby employers are able to move people around the country without having to deal with different situations in different provinces but with a situation where there's a sense of the common good, which is finding a retirement system that can work for everyone.
It was in that spirit of consensus that we set out to come to an answer. Ontario had an approach that was different from what we came up with, but we were able to use their ideas and to bring forward ideas from other provinces. We had very helpful interventions from many provinces to get to an answer that we think is going to be positive for, as you say, the generation of Canadians that's coming next, and that is the generation of Canadians who are less likely to have a workforce pension plan, who are more likely to be living in a lower interest rate environment, and who are more likely to have a larger number of jobs with different retirement situations in those different jobs.
We feel that we've improved the situation for Canadians in the future. We are confident that the way we've done it, which is a very gradual introduction to the program, starting in 2019 and increasing it over a seven-year period, is an approach that will allow our economy to continue to be strong. We have a win-win. It will be better for people in the long run and it will allow our economy to be strong in the short and the medium term.