Finance Committee on June 8th, 2026

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I was trying to get to the point, and, each time, I get interrupted by points of order. I'm just trying to set up the argument.

The crux of this is that we have higher life expectancies, first of all. Of course, that's different in different countries, so it's worth having that country-by-country comparison. Higher life expectancy is a good thing, but one of the issues presented by higher life expectancies would be more payouts from the pension system. That would affect the contribution rates of workers.

Having that comparison with different countries would be important. We know that birth rates are different in different countries.

[Jake Sawatzky, Liberal, New Westminster—Burnaby—Maillardville, BC]

I have a point of order. It's absurd that I actually even have to say this, but it's not relevant. That's it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you, Mr. Sawatzky.

Again, Mr. Ho, please stick to the subamendment for the relevance of your points. Thank you.

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Okay. Birth rates, life expectancies and other things that I'm going to get to are very relevant, because they're different in different countries. Normalizing the comparability of the key assumptions used by different pension plans is important.

Immigration levels are a big one. See, I got a reaction from them when I just said the words “immigration levels”. Some of my honourable Liberal colleagues on the other side had a reaction. Of course, we've had out-of-control immigration.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Why is he laughing? I know this is not the most interesting subject matter—

[Carlos Leitão, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Four times—

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

It is also important subject matter. Different immigration levels would also affect the contribution rates. Who's contributing has an effect on.... Overly high immigration levels in a short period of time, for example, could reduce wages, which could reduce contribution rates and would require workers to work more because they're now making less and saving less.

It's also whether their CPP is enough and their OAS is enough. It might not be enough to sustain their lifestyle, and they'll have to top up their RRSPs, TFSAs and additional savings vehicles in order to make themselves whole through retirement.

There are also things like workforce growth, the demographics of the workforce and the distribution of the age. It's not just the median age or the average age of the population, which is different in different countries. It's also the distribution of seniors to young people and middle-aged people.

Of course, there's wage growth and productivity growth. We know we have the lowest investment per worker in the G7 and the lowest productivity in the G7—

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Mr. Ho, the subamendment is with regard to the pension plans in different countries. If you could please stick to the actual topic at hand, that would be much appreciated by the committee members.

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Thank you, Chair. We are.

I'm not going to read the subamendment, because.... I'm going to be accused of not reading it, but it talks about comparing the reporting of pension plans in different countries. Of course, pension plans use different assumptions and have different ways of displaying that information—different accounting methods, for example. Creative accounting is something this Liberal Prime Minister has managed to showcase with his promise in the last year and three months. Canadians don't live in creative accounting, though. They live in reality; they don't live in Liberal press releases.

As Canadians live longer, their benefits must be paid for longer. We've seen a very weak wage growth, and contributions may be lower than expected. If productivity remains weak, the economy, the jobs and the employment rate supporting the pension system will be weaker.

If employment weakens, then contribution revenue is affected, and then, of course, all these assumptions matter. Having comparability and letting Canadians know that.... We do live in Canada—

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

We live in the greatest country in the world.

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

—but we have to make sure that we live in a world.... We can't just look at our own performance in anything. We have to look at the performance of other countries.

I know the Liberals like to cherry-pick data. Every time, as Conservatives and as opposition parties, we draw comparisons to other countries in terms of Canada's relative performance, we are accused of talking down Canada, while the party that's bringing down Canada is this Liberal government.

These are some of the arguments.... I'd like to speak more to this subamendment, but I'm going to be accused of wasting resources. There is a $70-billion deficit this year. One day of a deficit to the tune of.... It's much more than lights, a clerk and some staff here.

[Steeve Lavoie, Liberal, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

On a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Mr. Lavoie, you have the floor.

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

It's not even a drop in the bucket compared to the $70-billion deficit.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Mr. Ho, there's a point of order.

Thank you.

[Steeve Lavoie, Liberal, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Chair, I would again ask our colleague, who was talking about shedding light and so on, to come back to the subamendment, as you kindly asked him to several times, because he had completely gone elsewhere.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you.

Mr. Ho, go ahead.

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

These points of order have gone very off topic too, and are very accusatory. I'm trying to respond to them, but anyway, I'll wrap it up there and let other colleagues speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you, Mr. Ho.

Mr. Majumdar, you have the floor.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

This is a real honour. This is my first time at the finance committee.

I want to say, Madam Chair, greetings to you. It's been quite some time since we've been able to work together, and I'm grateful for the opportunity.

I have to note that Mr. Lavoie has excellent sartorial choices, with his striped shirt and solid tie. I have the same choice today, whereas Mr. Leitão has chosen the inverse of a solid shirt and a striped tie, and I think that's excellent as well. I just wanted to compliment them on their spring decisions. That's something I struggle with generally, so it's nice to have it affirmed that sometimes I get things correct.

Now, I know that members around the table are not interested in a conversation about sartorial decisions. I respect that, and I do want to get into the substance of the subamendment, because I actually have a bit of a background in this. Before I came into political life, I spent time working at a consulting firm where investment, energy and technology were core parts of how I earned a living. Pension funds and how sovereign funds in other parts of the world manage investment is a fascinating conversation and is completely relevant to this committee.

The subamendment is actually something that I bring a particular amount of enthusiasm for, and I say so because, as you know, around the world, the pools of capital are actually fairly concentrated, whether that's in Toronto, New York, Scandinavia or the Gulf countries. In Asia, you have Singapore and massive family offices in places like India and elsewhere. The performance of these major funds is critical to international finance but, more importantly, to Canadian taxpayers when it comes to the Canadian pension plan.

For our great and honourable colleague from the Bloc, I am also an admirer of the Caisse de dépôt. How they work around the world is emblematic of a fund that thinks clearly and unambiguously about returns for shareholders. They have a strong risk-adjusted portfolio, which I think the Canadian pension plan sometimes follows into different markets. It has been good in many ways for Canadian investment partners in returns to our taxpayers for the sacred pensions that we must guard.

In the spirit of getting it right, a comparison with how other jurisdictions look at this is very germane to the committee and to the bill, and I think this amendment will be well received by the public when they view this testimony in the public record. I have five points that I'd like to make on this. I aim to be not necessarily repetitive, but I will be if I find that my points are not getting across clearly. They are distinct points, and I think they are ways to help us think about how comparing the CPP with the United States, Australia and Sweden can advance funding, reliance on investment income and long-term financing of promised benefits.

Let me get started.

The first would be that advance funding builds intergenerational equity and reduces future fiscal pressure. Benchmarking the CPP's partial advance-funding model, which I know came under reform in the mid-1990s, against Australia's fully prefunded mandatory superannuation systems shows how accumulating assets today insulates future retirees and taxpayers from demographic shocks. In contrast, the U.S. Social Security system's predominantly pay-as-you-go structure has produced large unfunded obligations and projected shortfalls, underscoring the value of prefunding and of honouring promises without abrupt tax hikes or benefits adjustments.

Demographic shocks are something that Canada will have to deal with after 10 years of terrible management when it comes to our population levels and how immigration has impacted the funding base for the CPP. Those public policy questions actually make it critical for us to compare with other jurisdictions to see how adjustments are made for the kind of mess and chaos that Liberal governance in this country has resulted in. The lax control over our immigration has created an obligation and a funding pool for the CPP that will have massive long-term consequences.

We must look at other jurisdictions to get a sense as to how they're dealing with demographic pressures, not just of population through immigration, but population through natural growth, and how that might have long-term impacts on how we think about our pension fund. The public disclosure and reporting of that comparison is something that is I think critical to the finances of our country, especially given how much of a share it has in our national life. I'll start with that first point.

The second point is that funding-level comparisons also provide objective sustainability benchmarks.

International data on assets-to-expenditure ratios, buffer funds, as you would see in Sweden, and fully funded individual accounts, as you would see in Australia, allow rigorous assessment of the CPP's long-standing and currently strongly funded position and the chief actuary's 75-year sustainability findings. This helps the committee distinguish between systems that have built credible reserves and those facing growing actuarial deficits, informing evidence-based calibration of contribution rates and benefit promises.

It might sound like accounting gobbledygook but, at the end of the day, really being able to understand how to establish a sustainable pension fund and comparing the performance of our pension fund are critical.

You may have discovered, Madam Chair, that whenever members of Parliament, through OPQs, Order Paper questions, or through other means, try to get some transparency on these types of questions on the sustainability of pensions, we never get any answers. They stand apart from government. Parliament does not have the ability to draw from the pensions the kind of transparency that Canadians demand on key decisions on the long-term sustainability of it.

We're talking about 75-year benchmark bandwidths. Pensions around the world that are obligatory for populations have similar actuarial disclosures. Being able to really get into the guts of understanding how the pension plan safeguards the long-term interests of Canadians, mom-and-pop people who need to make sure that they can plan their retirement comfortably, including with inflation and currency changes, is something that I think the public would benefit from. The subamendment speaks to that through the proposal to have that comparison disclosed.

My third point is that reliance on professional investment returns enhances resilience. Contrasting the CPP investment board's diversified global portfolio and growing contribution of investment income, which I believe is projected to represent a rising share of revenues, with Australia's privately managed superannuation funds' and the U.S. trust funds' more constrained returns demonstrates how well-governed investment strategies can meaningfully supplement contributions, lowering long-term dependence on payroll taxes while managing market risk through independent professional oversight.

One key part of professional benchmarking with these funds is really critical to the future of these funds. You hear rumours in different jurisdictions about the government, maybe even Liberals, looking at cordoning off or mandating by law a portion of CPP to be invested into Canadian projects versus international projects, and about how the mix of global and domestic investment structures would be managed. There's a reason there's a separation between that, between partisan interest and political interest and thinking of long-term sustainability.

One of the successes of the Canadian pension fund, even if their returns, compared to massive major indices, are not entirely that different, is that it has largely been devoid of the kind of corruption you might imagine happening in other jurisdictions. Safeguarding against that by making sure that professional investment returns are scrutinized appropriately, in a way that safeguards against the political interests of the party of the day, is a critical issue to examine when we look at other jurisdictions.

My fourth point is that long-term financing lessons protect promised benefits from political and demographic risks. Comparisons reveal how Sweden's notionally defined contribution framework, with automatic balancing framework mechanisms and buffer funds, alongside Australia's explicitly funded accounts, provide clearer pathways to sustainable financing than pure pay-as-you-go models that risk sudden adjustments. As you see from U.S. benefits, upon trust fund depletion, this equips the committee to evaluate whether CPP enhancements maintain the plan's ability to deliver promised benefits across generations under realistic economic and demographic scenarios.

Political and demographic risks are the chief risks that the pension funds in Canada have to guard against. It's a point that I raised a little earlier. I mentioned that I didn't want to be redundant, but they do string together. When the political class decides to get engaged with macrofinance and says that it's going to get involved with pension plans and major investment institutions, when the Prime Minister shows up and acts in foreign jurisdictions as though he is somehow the vanguard, the chairman of the board, for Canadian pension investment, and he can control investment....

He's having a major investment conference this fall. Invitations have gone out to major investors, but none of the investors understand what the objective of the meeting is.

The Prime Minister is acting as though the pension funds are investment funds he can commandeer for his own interest. Objectively, that's the type of political interference that cannot be trusted. Even trying to paint a debt fund as a sovereign debt fund—borrowing money, with billions of dollars in interest accrued for it—

[Carlos Leitão, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Madam Chair, on a point of order, I'm sorry, but we are talking about the subamendment. We are not talking about possible alleged political interference in the management of the CPP. What my colleague is saying is interesting, but it is off topic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you, Mr. Leitão.

Mr. Majumdar, please stick to relevance with respect to the subamendment.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Madam Chair, I am making my points. It's very relevant. We are asking for the management of the CPP to be compared with the management of sovereign funds and pension funds in other jurisdictions.

If the Prime Minister is politicizing the CPP through his international diplomacy, as he has in Qatar, the U.A.E. and India, it is deeply concerning. Public press statements have all produced the kind of language where there is a perception of the political class deciding and driving how pension fund investment will be deployed. It is absolutely critical that we compare the CPP with other funds in similar jurisdictions. I know it may seem off topic, but it's absolutely germane to the subamendment and exactly why we're trying to push for this to be included. We're making a case through empirical adjustment, not rhetoric.

These are all facts that the Liberal government has produced for us to consider. They're not things that were made up out of thin air. To suggest that our concern about political and demographic risk to the CPP's governance is somehow not relevant to the matter is, I think, objectively obscene. We need to make sure we stay on topic, which is exactly what I'm doing by not getting distracted from the accountabilities that are required when we look at our funds and how those funds work in other jurisdictions.

I'll get into it a bit more. Comparisons reveal how Sweden's notional defined contribution framework with automatic balancing mechanisms and buffer funds.... Let me go to pure pay-as-you-go models. Pay-as-you-go models create massive exposure to risk adjustment. Look at what's happening with U.S. funds. This is something we should be very diligent in guarding against. Looking at positive and negative examples in other jurisdictions is quite relevant to this.

My fifth and final point is that global best practices strengthen governance, transparency and fiscal discipline. These are all key ideas that I wish I could carve into the desk of every Liberal legislator. It's about examining independent investment governance, which is the CPP model; clear individual account structures, which is the Australian model; and regular public reporting, which is the Swedish model—alongside expert analysis, such as that done by my dear friend Dr. Jack Mintz, the giant economic brain that Canada has. His emphasis on keeping pension funds healthy through undistorted, high risk-adjusted returns and sustainable retirement income reforms helps identify approaches that maximize returns for contributors. They minimize policy distortions and build public confidence in the long-term financing of Canada's public pension commitments.

Understanding how that weighs against other pensions around the world is really important for this committee to do, and these five points speak to the subamendment being offered up. Let me repeat them so the crowd back home understands what I've been going through. I can be a bit loquacious and verbose, and I apologize for that. There are five major points I want to suggest in terms of why this subamendment is worthy of committee consideration and worthy of passing.

The first is that advanced funding builds intergenerational equity and reduces future fiscal pressure. The second is that funding level comparisons provide objective sustainability benchmarks. The third is that reliance on professional investment returns enhances fund resilience. The fourth is that long-term financing lessons protect promised benefits from political and demographic risk, and the fifth is that global best practices strengthen governance, transparency and fiscal discipline.

These are five key things that are all essential to understanding why the report must include a comparison between the Canadian pension plan and public funding systems in other jurisdictions. I think there are some empirical truths at the core of them. They're not things that are what I would necessarily describe as typically partisan. They are all fair points in international finance and the governance of pension funds. They're all things that would help our pension fund and help our finance officials plan more judiciously and expeditiously for the benefit of Canadian taxpayers.

They're all things that guard against the political risks of parties that choose to use funds as their own slush funds to direct to their own projects or the kinds of demographic mistakes that Liberals have made that have created a real quandary for our country and our pensioners in the long term and are essential to the success of our national finances.

I look forward to having a continued healthy discussion on all of these types of topics. I hope members found my intervention to be useful. It's something that I really enjoy getting an opportunity to do in committees like this, which are important to our nation's public finances.

I yield the floor to the chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Majumdar.

We'll now continue with Mr. Lawton.