Okay, so this is what I was going to get at. In fact, our former Minister of Finance agreed with me back in the mid-nineties, except he was never quite prepared to work with me on changing it. But RRSPs simply don't work for the average Canadian. We've all known this for a long time; we're spending tonnes of money at the top, but it's not making the deal.
We need to overhaul pensions in this country, not to mention the fact that private pensions now, or other company pensions, are becoming somewhat a thing of the past to some degree, not to mention those that are now in default. I won't go into all that. I agree with you 100%. It's a discussion that's going on in my caucus quite aggressively these days...I don't mean my caucus; I mean myself and my friends and a couple of my colleagues. Nonetheless, I see that. I've seen it for some time. We tried to do it a bit earlier, but when times are good everybody thinks things are great and rosy.
I'll move on, but I agree with you.
Ms. Douglas, I wanted very quickly to say a couple of things. I agree with you 100% with respect to what I call the coloured lenses or the lensing of gender, racial, all of that. I've been saying that for some time, from way back in the eighties when I was at COSTI. It seems that things have to get really bad before we finally start seeing the light. The government needs to do this across the board.
The Standing Committee on the Status of Women, or rather the Liberal Party, wanted to have a gender equality commissioner who would report to the House. Maybe we need to call this person something else, to be more inclusive rather than only gender.
My question to you, though, is this. Multiculturalism is supposed to be playing a lead role in this area, and it's supposed to somehow be working with other departments and pulling and identifying all the issues that you've identified very clearly, and leading in the areas of health, HRDC and so on. I'm wondering, is there any activity that you see here, strengths? Are you working with that department at all on anything?