Thanks, Chair.
Welcome to the officials and thank you for being with us today. I'm not sure who would want to answer this question, but I'll put it there for either of you to respond to.
At a previous meeting we had two constituents from my riding of Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, Walter and Norma Pinsent, appear and talk about the marriage after 60 issue. Ms. Blaney was asking questions about that today, and I want to follow up on that because I've still got some concerns about this.
When I asked Norma why she decided not to participate in the survivor pension fund, she explained that she had decided not to after much consideration because, first of all, they were required to pay over $500 a month to build up the pension fund for her, which took a lot of money out of their retirement income. Second, she explained that if she passed before Walter did, they'd be out whatever money they had put into the program, so they would get zero dollars back.
I was a bit flabbergasted by that, quite frankly, and that's why I wanted to come back to this line of questioning. What I'd like the officials to outline for us at the committee is the makeup of the survivor pension fund program. How is it designed? What is the end result here? Given what Norma said, I'm not surprised that she made the decision she did.
Could the officials comment on that survivor pension fund program, how it's set up and outline some of the issues with it for the entire committee to understand?