Mr. Speaker, I appreciate very much the support of the Liberals for the motion today, the third party.
We acknowledge that there must be an increase in premiums and there are two or three plans on the table. In fact, there are many. There is one that the CLC has brought forward. There is another that comes from the provinces. They each define in great detail just what the shared increase would be.
It is a program funded by premiums of employers and employees alike. For example, one plan of the CLC would be to double benefits by increasing premiums by 0.43% of pensionable earnings for each of seven years. For a worker making the average salary of $51,000 a year, the initial cost of doubling future benefits works out to about 10¢ an hour, or $4 a week. That is about the cost of a couple of cups of coffee.
The provincial plan, provided by Mr. Sheridan of Prince Edward Island, has a different scheme and would increase it to help more middle-class people by a wedge process, which would allow higher premiums and higher payments therefore among workers with more money. They have costed that out at less than $2 a week, and in exchange, additional pension benefits of $3,000 a year.
In other words, the premiums would be modest and this is the right thing to do for Canadians now.