Mr. Speaker, the member talked about Canada savings bonds providing the federal government with more funds. I first question I want to ask is quite serious. As taxpayers, many people would have trepidation with providing the government huge sums of money when they see what sometimes gets done with it. I would point, for example, to the human resources development scandal not that long ago where $1 billion was misplaced or not accounted for. That is only one example of many.
I sometimes question whether the idea of providing the government with increased revenues via Canada savings bonds is a legitimate policy on behalf of the Canadian taxpayers. I am not sure it actually serves the interests of the country as well as the hon. member might think. I would like him to comment on the feasibility of loaning more money to the government when its track record is not so good.
I served on the finance committee when the pension plan changes were last going through. For example, we in the opposition wanted to bring up representatives from the Chilean government to find out about the Chilean system. As the situation stands now in Chile, individuals know exactly how much money is in their pension fund. It is not something that is dabbled with by the government. It is a privately held account and the money can be invested in a number of private investment vehicles.
I know the member has some objections to that, but the crux of what I am getting at is that we can ask the average person in Chile how much is invested in the fund in total, how much has been deposited in a given year and what the return on investment is. I would argue that members in this place are probably some of the better informed in the country on issues of pension. Here we are debating it today.
If I were to look across the way and ask some of the hon. members how much they had put into their pension and what the return was on their investment I think some of the people debating this very law today would not have as firm a handle on it as the average Chilean would. I would ask the member why we were not allowed to bring people up from Chile on this whole question of pension reform, because I think the Chileans have done some laudable things.
I have a third question for the hon. member. We did have testimony in that committee meeting from the person who manages the Ontario teachers' pension fund. It is the largest private sector pension fund in the country. It is worth over $10 billion or at least was at that time but I imagine it is substantially larger now. That individual told us that with the changes the government brought in whereby 9.9% of someone's salary would be skimmed off for CPP purposes, it would at best buy the government an election or perhaps two. The reason he said that was that the actuarial analysis indicates that the max out of the fund will happen in about 2017 based on current demographic projections.
However, despite the 9.9% deduction right now, the fund will not be able to sustain itself. He thought that increasing it to 9.9% was a co-optive scheme by the government to try to increase the amount of revenue funds right now to cover it off for an election or maybe a second election but that after that the fund would not be sustainable and would be bankrupt anyway. He thought substantial changes were better sooner rather than later.
There are three questions. The first question has to do with giving money to the government. I do not single out the Liberal government for this because many other governments have wasted taxpayer funds. The second question deals with the fact that the Chileans were not allowed to present evidence. The third question concerns the whole idea of it basically being something that will be a massive liability. I look at the pages today and I do not think any of them seriously believe they will be able to collect a pension. It is a huge liability that we will not be able to sustain.