Mr. Chair, the member spoke of the importance of the integrity of a third tier of the retirement income system in Canada, which is the self-directed, self-contributed registered retirement savings plan.
The Conservative member emphasized how essential that tier, that key plank was to the overall security of the retirement income system in our country and basically implied to Canadians, through the House, that messing with that was a mistake. Yet the government messed with it.
The government messed with it in May 2010 through a functional and guidance order to staff when dealing with applications for the guaranteed income supplement. It changed the rules. It fundamentally changed the message to Canadians about the safety and security of their investments, which they thought they were making when they were in their working lives and which have now changed now that they are in their retiring lives.
I want to hear from the member, not whether the government is reviewing the situation and not whether it is assessing the situation. The government made a decision in May 2010 to eliminate tens of thousands of dollars in value from RRSP and RRIF contributions by amending the orders for RRIFs and it did so without any thought or even giving one word of advice or information to seniors—