Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for being here.
As a veteran, I want to make a quick comment on the clawback thing, and then I have a couple of specific questions for Mr. Shaw.
There is no clawback. What has happened is that when veterans retire, they go from one source of retirement pension, which is under the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act, plus the bridge benefit, until they hit age 65. They now get it from two sources: the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act plus the Canada Pension Plan.
The Canada Pension Plan is designed to replace the bridge benefit. The amount of Canada pension somebody gets will depend on what they've done from the time they retired at, in my case, age 47 until reaching age 65. If somebody has done very little to qualify for CPP over that period of fifteen to eighteen years, then the CPP they get is going to be smaller.
It's not a clawback. Both programs are working exactly as designed; we're getting exactly what we paid for from both.
We can go back and argue with the design, if we wish, and that's fair, and going forward that may be something somebody might want to look at. But the personal contributions people would have to make in the military would go up very substantially, and they would probably not be happy with that.
It's an emotional issue, and I understand that, but the facts around it are not well appreciated by a lot of veterans. I get people pinning it on me, as a veteran and now a member of Parliament, and asking, “Why aren't you supporting it?” Well, guys, go back and look at it; it's working exactly as it was designed. Argue with the design if you want, but we're getting what we paid for.
That said, Mr. Shaw, you have some good experience, obviously on the Australian side and on the Canadian side now, with exposure to both systems. Can you give us a couple of examples of strengths and weaknesses within the Australian system and the Canadian system, with a view to things we might look at and should be considering here?