Mr. Speaker, again the member may not have heard my earlier comments before question period.
We have to anticipate. We cannot just wait for it to happen or it will be a disaster for pensioners. We have to anticipate that the baby boomer generation which hit our high schools throughout the sixties and put tremendous pressure on our school system, will, 10 years from now, hit the pension system.
The proportion of seniors in the population will grow from 12 percent today to 16 percent shortly after the turn of the century to 25 percent of our population. At the same time the proportion of income earning Canadians in the population will drop dramatically. That is why we have to act now.
We can wait and do what the auditor general said would be necessary in the next century and increase the payments my children and grandchildren will have to pay to 15 percent or we can act now and ensure that we have a fund that will meet that growing bulge in the retirement population. We can do it fairly over the people who are going to be contributing in those years, until that boom hits us. Frankly that is a fairer way to do it than to turn a blind eye and leave it to the next generation to worry about.