Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. Everybody has their own opinion on what would do for a pension plan. Let us look at the realities of this. The reality is that this Canada pension plan was brought into being because of the fact that a lot of people cannot or do not contribute to their own pension plan. A lot of them cannot for various reasons and it is not their fault.
Therefore, back in the 1960s this plan was devised to take care of those people at the end of their working time when the company did not provide a pension, or maybe they were self-employed and there was no pension plan available and they had nothing but the old age security.
This was a terrible situation for people to be in. I have seen that happen to people on the street where I lived. To make matters worse, when the person who received the old age security passed away, the spouse was left with nothing. This is why this type of plan is necessary. I believe it is necessary and obviously the majority of Canadians believe this type of plan is necessary.
There is a large segment of society that for one reason or another do not contribute to RRSPs. That is a fact. There are RRSPs and they will be there in the future. I think they are a tremendous thing for people who have the ability to contribute to them. However, I also believe that there has to be some kind of social safety net that we are always talking about. This is a social safety net. This is a big part of it and Canadians want it. I believe it is very necessary, along with RRSPs.