Mr. Speaker, my colleague is very well versed on this and, as a parliamentary secretary, I know he has worked extremely hard with our former minister of finance to implement many of the solutions.
If viewers were to look back in history and look at the innovative partnership that occurred there, they would see the types of innovations that were implemented on behalf of the Canadian public.
The member's suggestion is very good because those people who are self-employed do tend to fall between the cracks. Their income ebbs and flows as time passes. It is very important that we look at the fiscal pressures that are placed on people as they get older.
I suggest that the demographic time bomb that is before us is the most under-represented and underappreciated issue of our day. Unless we implement the solutions today to deal with those challenges, a lot of people will be unnecessarily hurt.
Quite frankly, all we need to do is take a look at the European experience and the pressures being applied to the pension structure in Europe and we will see how worrisome this is. We need to look at that in order to implement the solutions today that will ensure Canadians as they get older will have the money they need. Some solutions that we have worked on for some time could provide that.
However, if we fail to deal with this today it will be a gross act of negligence on the part of the government. I implore the government to do that and to work with the rest of us to implement these solutions for the benefit of our citizens.