Mr. Speaker, my colleague asked an important question. As Barrie McKenna, a business columnist with The Globe and Mail, stated:
Looking to financial literacy to fill the void is like asking ordinary Canadians to be their own brain surgeons and airline pilots. The dizzying array of financial products, mixed with chaotic and increasingly irrational financial markets, makes the job of do-it-yourself financial planning almost impossible—no matter how literate you are.
What happens, of course, is that this is just driving people into the institutions that have financial products. In this country, we pay two and three times as much on management fees in the private sector than in the Canada pension plan, which is a better way of saving for Canadians.
We have a problem. It is considered to be a very small first step, but one that requires leadership from the government. We are not sure we are going to get it, but we think this is a start that ought to be made.