Thank you very much for coming today. I appreciate it.
As you can probably guess, I'm going to ask you some questions about the book you wrote in 2012 called The Real Retirement, because it became a touchstone in terms of understanding what we face in the future regarding retirement for Canadians. I would submit to you, Minister, that there is a big difference between what you wrote in 2012 and what you're telling us here today.
You gave us four reasons for why it was necessary to make these changes to the CPP. One of them is that there's a feeling in the country that people haven't set aside enough money and that young people are not saving. You also said that one-quarter of Canadians face a significant drop in their lifestyle, according to an Angus Reid poll.
I want to start with the Angus Reid poll, Mr. Minister, just to point out that about their polling results, Angus Reid indicated that “the general public seems not to be paying close attention to the process. Fully one-in-three...say they 'haven't seen or heard anything' about CPP expansion”. This was around the time when you said that was the motivation and, again, why you thought you had the approval of the Canadian public to do this. They go on to say that “roughly the same number (35%) report that they're following news coverage or chatting with friends about it.” This is what Angus Reid said about those numbers: “This latter total is significantly lower than most issues about which ARI asks this question.”
Therefore clearly, Minister, the reality is that Canadians certainly didn't understand what you were proposing as motivation for the changes to CPP.
Minister, you said a couple of things in The Real Retirement when you were asked about the Ontario Liberal Party suggestion to expand CPP. Your quote was “we would be putting too many eggs in one basket”. You commended the former Harper government for increasing and putting in place the TFSA. You said, on retirement age, that if we were to retire three years later than we do now, “any concerns about having adequate retirement income would practically vanish.”You said, “It would also alleviate any shortages in the workforce due to the aging population.” Finally, you also indicated as well, Minister, in your book, that “the Dickensian image of poverty is virtually non-existent in Canada today.”
Minister, if your feeling in 2012 and your expert advice in 2012-13 were that people will have enough to set aside, that TFSAs are a good way for young people to save, that the Angus Reid Institute actually doesn't say what you contend, that the Canadian population does believe this is a good thing—because, frankly, they don't know about it—and, finally, that one-quarter of Canadian families face a significant drop in lifestyle, then I would say that when you already said concerns about having retirement income would practically vanish if we were to retire three years earlier, why did you roll back the amount we can put into our TFSAs? Why did you change the retirement age? Why did you do CPP expansion when it's completely counterintuitive to everything you wrote as the plan for us to be able to be self-sufficient and indeed prosperous going into the future?