Madam Speaker, I listened to the hon. member opposite as usual from the government side scaremongering about proposals to have more of an RRSP style of a plan for Canada pension. He scaremongers without justification because there are many countries throughout the world, as we have told the government over and over again and which it knows very well, that have already fully or partially introduced this type of system.
Perhaps the member saw a program on television last Friday night, 20/20 on ABC. There was an entire segment dedicated to the Chilean experience which is now close to 20 years old. What the program did first was interview all the scaremongers in North America, the unions, the liberals who are opposed to this program. They say you will lose all your savings. The world has ended. Because it is not government, it will not work. Then the program went down to Chile and interviewed people on the streets and in the centres for the pension plans. Every person said what a significant change it was and how good that had been for the pension plans of Chile.
With that plan now almost 20 years old, the benefits to pensioners have been phenomenal. To scaremonger by saying that people are going to lose their investment is ridiculous.
The member knows very well that the government can set in place regulations about what sort of investments can be made, the security of those investments.
I would like to ask the member whether he saw the program W5 on Friday night and, if not, whether he will commit to get a copy to at least see the other side of the story.
The second question is whether he attended the conference that was held right here in Ottawa by finance department officials where Chilean representatives were there to tell how well their program works. Did he attend that conference or see the program on television?