Mr. Speaker, I will not make any comment about his preamble as it would be telling far too much.
As the former parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance, he is well-versed in these issues. We can do a few things. I agree with him about shifting the age upward for the RRIF but we can two more things.
First, we could allow people to take, say, $10,000 from their RRSP after the age of 55, tax free, if they make below a certain amount of money. The reason for that is that there are costs we incur as we get older, particularly medical costs. Why not allow people to access those funds from their RRSPs, tax free, to enable them to provide for themselves? That could be something innovative.
Second, if we were to completely abolish the mandatory age of retirement, in order to give an incentive to keep people engaged in the workforce but also lessen the pressure on our CPP, we could do the following. I introduced a bill that would work like this: at 65 we would receive 50% of our CPP, tax free; at 66, 60%; at 67, 70%; and at 68, 80%. What would this do? It would keep people engaged in the workforce, lower the demands on the CPP, improve our productivity and give people more money in their pockets at a time when they may need those moneys in their pockets because of personal circumstances. In doing so, it would be a win-win situation for all concerned.
Those are innovative solutions that we could adopt and they would be helpful to people as they get older.
It is interesting that when the mandatory age of retirement was put forward at 65, the average life expectancy was only 58. People thought they would never reach that age so they thought it was a small thing. Women are now living to the age of 82 and men to 79. It is now incumbent upon us to rethink the situation.