Mr. Speaker, I have a question about pensions for the parliamentary secretary.
She waxed lyrical on how marvellous these pooled pensions, which the government introduced in its budget, were. I will acknowledge that we Liberals supported that measure but only because it is better than nothing. I submit that a supplementary Canada pension plan, which we proposed, would have been far superior. This is largely because the government's proposal is private sector and Canada has one of the highest management fees in the world, whereas the supplementary CPP would be much lower cost and would have provided competition for this private sector. As well, a difference of only one percentage point in the management fee can have a huge negative effect on a person's pension because of the power of compound interest.
While PRPPs are better than nothing, would the member not agree that, for the reasons I have just given, it would have been much better to have a supplementary Canada pension plan?