Mr. Speaker, the government is providing three pillars in the retirement system for employees, those who are approaching retirement. There is the government portion, which is the traditional CPP-QPP, OAS and GIS. Then there is the individual portion which is the RRSP, and there are those who belong to a larger corporation. Only about 30% or 40% of Canada's population have those plans. That is the RPP.
We are providing another portion for those who are in small and medium size businesses which traditionally cannot go to a financial institution for a plan, because they only have three to five employees. For example, people in a private practice, such as lawyers, accountants, doctors, plumbers and restaurant owners do not have the ability to entice financial institutions to set up a registered pension plan.
With this pooled pension plan, the investment aspect is regulated to prevent the failures of the market of over-zealous managers. At the same time I think the costs will be pooled in such a way to manage it at a reasonable cost. Most of the pension plan costs run somewhere around 1% and 2%. That is a very reasonable cost.