Mr. Speaker, I welcome my hon. colleague from Burlington back to this House. I am sure he spent much of his Christmas also consulting with his constituents. I know he has had some prebudget discussions with them.
The pooled registered pension plan has taken a lot of time to design. We have looked at models all around the world, in Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain. In fact, Great Britain is now developing its NEST program that it had hoped to put together in a matter of months. It has actually been about three years now. It is a challenge to put one of these programs forward.
We have taken all of the good points out of those programs and put them into this framework with the primary purpose of keeping low costs. That is why we are opening this up to any valid potential provider, whether it is a financial institution, a pension fund or an insurance company, that can provide strong oversight and can carry out the fiduciary duty to be responsible to the plan members, the employees, to ensure that it guarantees the safety of those funds in the plan.
Competition and the volume of plans that will be involved in the pooled registered pension plan will keep the costs low, lower than we have seen in this country. That is why this will be successful. That is why businesses are coming to us and thanking us for putting this forward. Businesses to which I have spoken in the last two days have said that they will take this and provide it to their employees.