Madam Speaker, as everyone knows, RRSPs have been around for a long time and they are quite significantly entrenched in our system. People need to know that unfortunately there are problems with RRSPs that the government simply does not talk about.
First and foremost, it is about $17 billion in terms of cost to provincial and federal governments in order to sponsor these RRSPs, $5 billion for the provinces, $12 billion out of federal government revenue every year. Imagine what we could do with $17 billion in federal and provincial government revenues in terms of making sure there is pension security for Canadians.
The government also does not tell people that the management fees I referred to take up as much as 40% of the investment an individual makes in an RRSP over a 40 or 45 year period. That means these folks think they are going to have enough and they are actually making headway, but the reality is they are not. They are being taken advantage of in many ways.
We cannot get rid of our RRSPs because they have been entrenched for too long. But we need to be cognizant of their downside.