I think there's an important distinction that needs to be made between what was proposed by the Wynne government in Ontario and what's being proposed by the Smith government here in Alberta. The big distinction is that what was being proposed in Ontario and, frankly, what was being considered at roughly the same time in both B.C. and Alberta, was a supplementary plan that would be publicly run by the province but would sit on top of the CPP. It was a supplementary plan. I want to make it clear that we in the Alberta labour movement actively participated in support of the idea of creating a supplementary plan under our previous provincial government. I think it was the Stelmach government.
CPP is not enough, frankly. To be fair, it was never designed to be the entirety of your retirement security. They talk about the three-legged stool in pension policy. They talk about public plans like CPP, personal savings and workplace pensions. The problem that we have, especially here in Alberta, is that, unlike in the 1960s, when CPP was started, a large number of people had access to workplace pensions. Here in Alberta, that's no longer the case. In Alberta, 75% of working Albertans have no workplace pension of any sort, whether it's defined benefits, defined contributions or even RRSPs. That's one leg of the three-legged stool that is gone for most workers in this province. That makes the first leg, CPP, even more important. We don't support our provincial government using it as a bargaining chip for politics. That's not what it's for. It's for retirement security.
If we were talking about a supplementary plan on top of CPP, that's an entirely different conversation. It's one that we would enthusiastically support. Especially for those workers who don't have workplace pensions, we should have that conversation.