Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee.
With the CPP and the OAS, I will put the two together, because they are so inextricably linked in how we do it. We would like to provide a few key issues.
The first piece is that it disproportionately costs people who are poor more than the actuarial amount that they get back from it. There's excellent actuarial science to indicate that for CPP and OAS payments being paid by people who are quite poor, it doesn't balance out on the other end. It is a structural concern of institutionalized poverty, and there are gender concerns around that, as well.
The second piece is that it can disproportionately negatively affect immigrant populations. As many of you would know, you need to have a number of different qualifications in order to get your CPP and OAS. That does have an effect in the long term. You need to pay in for 40 years, or for partial benefits 10 years, and be 59, while living in Canada.
What we know is that over the life course people who are in immigrant populations in Canada are significantly poorer as they age, as a result of that. It's not well indexed to support the fact that Canada is a population that is welcoming its diverse immigrants. We need to rethink that in the longer term. It does not currently reflect a positive outlook for finances for older people who come to Canada.