I agree with what has been said in relation to many of the objectives. I think there has to be intervention and obligations when it comes to pension plans.
At the CSN, we have obviously looked at the idea of doing this through the public plan, but what gave us pause were precisely considerations of intergenerational fairness. Increases in contributions were introduced very late, so that a youth entering the labour market now is paying far more than he can expect to receive in benefits. In our opinion, that is utterly unfair.
Furthermore, workers in general, and women in particular, deserve better. That is the reason why we are calling on the government to intervene, to impose the introduction of supplemental defined benefit pension plans, on an industry-wide basis, that employers would be required to sponsor. Of course, for the lowest paid workers, we also see a need for the public plan to be enhanced—for example, by increasing the Guaranteed Income Supplement and making other similar adjustments.
However, doubling the protection provided by the public plan, thinking that this will improve pension security for women and workers as a whole strikes us, unfortunately, as an unfair proposition from an intergenerational standpoint.