Evidence of meeting #36 for Status of Women in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was plan.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5 p.m.
Chair, Georgian Bay Chapters, Canadian Association of Retired Persons
The crisis revealed these cracks, but it didn't cause them. It's systemic in the way these plans have been managed. Corporations don't want defined benefit plans, and you can see that by the way they steer away from them. They don't want the liability and they don't see any benefit in them.
When a corporation really focuses on reducing costs, they can dig up some things that weren't revealed before. You can see this if you look at the submission by the so-called “group of seven” in corporate Canada. If you look at their submission to the finance committee, you will see that they have asked for things that will actually put pensioners at greater risk, not lesser risk. They're asking for de-indexation for the calculation of pension solvency. They're asking for a discount rate that's higher, and will therefore cost them less, in the deposits they have to make to the pension plan.
The Bell Pensioners' Group has hired an actuary to look at this. It would actually increase the risk to pensioners by 25% at wind-up. Yet this is being proposed as a solution. It reveals the attitude of corporate Canada.
I'm saying we have to make some changes so they understand the direction they're going. Once they understand it, they're very good at managing.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much, Mr. Braniff.
I want to thank everyone for coming and answering questions. There are a couple of questions I wanted to ask, but because we have a time constraint here I will leave them and see if I can get some answers from Ms. Byers and Mr. Dussault later.
Thank you very much for coming.
[Proceedings continue in camera]