Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right. Only a third of Canadians right now have workplace pensions, and many of those workplace pension plans are underfunded and in jeopardy. We saw it most recently, as the member rightly points out, with AbitibiBowater and with Nortel.
That is one of the reasons why the very first bill I had the privilege of introducing in this House, when I first got elected in 2006, was a bill to protect workers' pensions and put them at the head of the line in cases of commercial bankruptcy. Two of my colleagues, the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek as well as one of our Thunder Bay members, introduced similar legislation that also focused on pension protection for workers who are impacted by commercial bankruptcies. These bills are absolutely critical.
There is a third piece though. There are public pensions and workplace pensions, and there is a third piece of the Canada pension system that we also need to focus on. The member referenced it in his question, the RRSP component. I wonder how many members in this House realize that one of the things in this budget implementation bill that is before the House today would actually retroactively charge the GST to commissions that are paid on holdings in an RRSP account. It is absolutely insane.
This budget literally takes leaps backwards instead of tiny steps forward in terms of helping those people who built our country to live their retirements with dignity and respect.