Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In most other countries of the world, the intent is to delay the age at which one can fully benefit from retirement advantages. It isn't complicated. The fact that people live longer means that today people are going, for the most part, to live longer after work than during their work lives. There are also the living conditions that extend life expectancy, and mean that people are in better shape and can work longer.
If we wanted to improve things, we would also have to look at the age of retirement, as the previous government did. The current government has brought the age of retirement back to 65. Honestly, I would say that the global tendency is to increase that age and not to lower it. Perhaps we could have gone halfway and indexed each year according to mortality statistics. If we had begun to do that in 2007 as they did in Sweden, we would already be on our way. It would have been better than changing things abruptly. It's very difficult to change that.
In addition, the population is aging, which means it is difficult to find available workers. The more we encourage people to leave the labour market early, the harder it gets. In Quebec, for instance, we made extraordinary efforts to increase the rate of participation of women in the labour force, by introducing various programs. This was successful, because today the rate of participation of women in the workforce is much higher.
When you look at the current demographic picture, you see that it's difficult to reach the same rate of participation in the workplace for people of more than 45 years of age. Of course this is not only due to individuals and to retirement projects. Employers must also make efforts. In any case, this is a factor we need to pay greater attention to when considering how to improve the plan.