Thank you, Chair. I appreciate it.
I will, to my colleague's point, bring this up to our modern day, but I think it's important because it gets to a point that I think needs to be said. I promise you that in relatively quick order, I will get there.
By the mid-1990s, of course, we started to see a reversal of those demographics, and the vast outnumbering of workers to retirees started to shrink. The demographic pyramid in the 1960s was something like this and then started to go like this—I hope this isn't a prop—during the 1970s, 1980s and then into the 1990s. What the chief actuary officer said, in 1995, was that the CPP fund would be out by 2015. The point is that, actually, the government has allowed the CPP to become precarious at points in history. With the chair's and the other members' indulgence, this is something I referred to before.
Quite frankly, when I was door-knocking during the last election, I got to talk to thousands of my residents in a relatively short period of time. It was amazing how many of them still believed that the conditions of the 1990s CPP were still in place. Of course, to be honest, it wasn't helped by some individuals, some groups that tried to put out the disinformation—it wasn't misinformation—that a Conservative government would somehow reduce or eliminate the CPP and OAS. Quite frankly, that's a terrible thing to do because, for folks who are or will be completely dependent on CPP, this was absolutely terrifying for them. That's what gets us back to the subamendment.
Also, with respect to the member's saying that, perhaps, we're not going as fast as we could, I agree with him. However, I also strongly argue that it is not because of this side of the table. He's quite right. We have put up numerous subamendments. Those subamendments have been put out there as a good-faith effort to improve the reporting so that those individuals.... Literally, I've seen seniors in tears because they believe that they may not get CPP going forward, and that is the only difference between their being able to pay their rent or being able to eat, which, even at that, they're barely doing because of the high rates of inflation. This extra information, this extra reporting....
As I said, we're not in the early 1900s anymore, when the government just needed to create a report and put it in a stack somewhere. I believe that government can do better than that, in this digital age, to actually get information out to people. I asked some of the representatives from the Department of Finance not just the question, “Are you completing these reports?”, but also, “To what extent do you know, if at all, whether this information is actually being read by Canadians?” My anecdotal evidence is that it's not, and that there's a good portion of Canadians who are unaware that the CPP is currently solvent for the next 75 years.
I might also add that the contribution increase to the CPP recently has also created some trepidation amongst the people of Northumberland—Clarke, particularly among seniors. They took that to mean that there was a challenge to the funding or the solvency. Going back now to reduce the CPP contribution could very well make people nervous. I've been, throughout most of this discussion, convinced that CPP is still on solid ground, even at 9.5%. I think that we need to make sure that this is communicated to Canadians.
I believe we're up to, I don't know, six, seven or eight different subamendments on that. The government has yet to vote in favour of any of them. In fact, the member opposite criticized me. It was I who did this, so I'll take full responsibility for making changes on the fly.
The reason I was making those changes was that I was trying to extend an olive branch. I was trying to get agreement on even a watered-down solution that would be agreeable to the government. Unfortunately, I couldn't get there, nor have they proposed any compromises. With the number of amendments and subamendments that we have put out there on the floor, you would think that just once they would step up and say, “Do you know what? We're not always the smartest gal or guy in the room, and the Conservatives actually have a good idea on this. Maybe a little bit more disclosure or maybe getting that information out to the people of Canada would be a good thing. Maybe we can work with them. Perhaps this amount of information isn't workable, but let's see if we can find some common ground here.”
Conservatives have once again put out our hand. We realize that through the floor crossings, the Liberal government has a majority and they can wield that power as they wish, but I received some great acclaim for using the metaphor of a tree falling in the forest, and I have another one here. The members opposite might want to get ready and maybe write this down.
This one comes from that deeply profound and important cultural icon, Spider-Man—