My main area of research over the years has been public pension policy. I'm very popular on that issue in Europe. They asked me to come over and speak on it.
About every ten years we get interested in pension policy in Canada. For many reasons it simply hasn't had the political leverage in Canada that it's had in Europe, but there are very good reasons for that. Our public pension system is a very low-cost item. We spend about 5% of GDP on our public pension system and get those low poverty rates I mentioned earlier. The European countries are spending anywhere between 10% and 15% of GDP on their public pension systems. We have very different mechanisms of financing. Half of our old age budget, at least in the pension area, comes from general revenue rather than payroll taxes. That saved us from many of the pressures being experienced in the larger European countries.