Obviously, when we started the campaign we recognized that 11 million Canadians who went to work today have no workplace pension, and the only pension they're going to have when they retire is the Canada pension plan. The fundamental challenge we face is that we know that their savings are very low. The reality is that for the average Canadian male, a little over $500-and-something a month is currently being paid out under CPP. For women it's even less than that. It's in the range of $474, so when we were looking at what we would like to see happen to an expanded CPP, we figured doubling the CPP benefit over a phase-in period would be the appropriate way to proceed because this would ensure that those Canadians who are currently getting the average benefit will see a doubling of that benefit as this is phased in.
Of course, we're not pleased that we ended up where we did, but again it is a significant increase in the context, given that for the last 50 years the benefit had not changed other than the inflation protection that Canadians get who receive a benefit on a regular basis. It is a reasonable compromise.
We also knew we had to convince the provinces and the federal government to land in the same place, and given the complexity of CPP changes, this was not an easy task, as my friend Mark Janson noted. It required 66% or two-thirds of the provinces, representing 66% or two-thirds of the population. Where they ended up, obviously it was an improvement, but we would have preferred a much larger improvement because it took us 50 years to get to this stage. I hope it doesn't take us another 50 years to get to the next stage in improving the Canada pension plan.