Mr. Speaker, I am not going to try to score too many points, but the last time we went through a difficult process of negotiations with the provinces and substantially increased the contributions of individuals, it was opposed by the New Democratic Party at the time. We have no problem with saying we need to continue to talk to the provinces about improvements in the Canada pension plan. There is a very legitimate argument that the provinces have not agreed to the changes in the CPP and that we cannot ignore what the provinces are saying and doing.
My difficulty is that we have to see this problem in a much broader context than that in which it is currently being discussed. That context is one in which there are so many seniors and so many workers today who are not covered by any plan, who are not covered by RRSPs and who are not sufficiently covered. If the government is going to go ahead with this pooled plan which has the support of the provinces, at the very least, we should not only increase the GIS and improve the situation for people who are on old age pensions, we should also allow the Canada pension plan to compete effectively with the pooled plans in order to keep the rates down on administration of the pooled plans.