Madam Speaker, if the member keeps asking relevant and thoughtful questions like that, I just might have to join his fan club. I truly appreciate his comments.
When we were talking about pensions and the whole issue of pension security, we were not just talking about what is publicly available, such as the CPP, old age security and the guaranteed income supplement. In fact, 34% of Canadians have private pensions and RRSPs, and 19% rely solely on CPP and 23% on OAS. You get the idea.
The whole idea of pension security is drifting into new territory. We are going now from defined benefits to defined contributions, which basically means that the entire risk of someone's pension relies on him or her as the individual. That is an onerous responsibility for someone who is not used to playing the market, for someone who is not used to being in that position.
I will not say that the government does not get it. I hope it does, but there has not been much action so far.
What do you think? Does it get it or not?
Getting back to the vision thing, here is the situation. Over the coming five to ten years, we need to look at the elements making pensions easily accessible and to define the universality of the pension plans to allow pension security. A large group of people is going to be pensioned off very quickly, and so there is no time to waste.