Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak to the bill that I think is so critical to the future of all Canadians.
The reality is that Canadians have not been saving enough for retirement. This has been a result of a changing workforce in which pensions are less prevalent, and where employers' retirement provisions are becoming more and more meagre. Oftentimes Canadians are working contract positions or working in self-employed situations where they do not have access to funds to help support their retirement ambitions.
I can say, having lived through my twenties, longer ago than perhaps I would like to admit, and having talked to friends in that period of their life, it was something they did not consider and were not saving appropriately for. Unfortunately, as they have families and their lives get busier, that trend continues, and they do not start saving adequately until it is often too late. That means that the retirement funds they have are insufficient to fund their needs.
The reality of that is that seniors are now left with low incomes and in situations in which they have limited opportunities to either expand their income or to meet their basic needs. We do not want that retirement future for anyone, and it is incumbent upon us as legislators to look at the policy mechanisms we can put in place to ensure that it is not the outcome that hardworking Canadians meet when they complete their careers and decide it is time to retire, or when they are in a position when work is no longer possible.
Frankly, not taking action in this regard is reckless, irresponsible, and in flagrant disregard of the future of those Canadians. It is a totally unacceptable position to say that we should not be making policy moves to try to ameliorate this situation.
What particularly concerns me about the position taken by the official opposition, the Conservatives, is that they put forward no alternative. It is, “You're on your own. Good luck. Hope you figure it out”. That is not good enough. We ran very clearly on improving the Canada pension plan and ensuring that Canadians have that bedrock underneath them.
This plan will see Canadians having about one-quarter to a third of their retirement income from their pension. That is a very important change. It is an expansion of all the other things we are doing and not the only thing we are doing, but an important piece of the solution to where we need to go. If we do not do it, frankly, we will be in a lot of trouble.
I hear the Conservatives try to portray this as a taxation issue. The reality is, as I saw in my time leading various teams in different organizations, that an employer has a responsibility for the retirement of their employees, and an individual has a responsibility to plan and pay for their own retirement. This enables both of those things to happen. Savings are not a tax, but a prudent, intelligent plan for our future, and to characterize it otherwise is dishonest and disingenuous.
The bill is very clear. It is broadly supported by many provinces, by many people of different political stripes, but certainly, after six days of debate, after more than 36 interventions by the Conservative Party, there has been more than enough debate for us to move forward.
Just to give people some context about what we have in the parliamentary calendar, there are 55 sitting days from September to December. That is all we have: 55 days. Seven of them are supply days, which the opposition can use as they see fit. There were three days of debate on the Paris agreement, one day mandated to debate the Standing Orders, one day lost to debate on procedural tactics from the Conservative Party. That only leaves 43 days for the rest of government business. We have given six days to this, including today, and the Conservative Party, rather than using the full day for debate, as they supposedly had other members who wanted to speak, had us engage in all kinds procedural tactics, including trying to shut down the House yesterday.
It is disrespectful of this place.
For the Conservative Party, which invoked time allocation more than 100 times, which stunted debate entirely and shut down the House from having an opportunity to have a say on the issues of the day, when it has been allocated this amount of time on a matter that is focused, that is clear, and that is simple, to cry that somehow its rights have been infringed upon is obscene.
The reality is that the government has many important items it must pass and get done on behalf of the Canadian people. This place, this Parliament, has an obligation to ensure that the business of the nation is done.
These procedural tactics and games do not do any justice to that, and they particularly do not do any justice when the matter in front of us is as substantive as this.
The debate we should have, and I would welcome it, is how we can do more. How can we make sure that this pending issue, this huge problem we have of Canadians not saving enough and not having the funds they need to have a safe and secure retirement, is something we can work on collectively in a bipartisan way?
I am encouraged that this issue of CPP across the country, by and large, has been bipartisan. We have heard from Conservatives, from New Democrats, from Greens, and from people of all stripes saying that this is something we can agree on.
I would have hoped that the debate would extend that further to say, what else can we do? What other policy mechanism can we bring to bear? We cannot afford to have our population come to a point where their retirement is not going to be able to fulfill their needs?
The bill we have in front of us today is an important step in the journey, but it is not the end of the road. Therefore, we are looking at other measures, which were identified just a few moments ago, such as reducing the retirement age from 67 to 65 and looking at the supplement mechanism for old age security and how much it is able to provide for folks who are in income-insecure positions. We have to look at some of the other elements of the social safety network.
We recognize, and anyone who is interested in fiscal prudence would recognize, that if we do not make the investments on the pension side of the equation to ensure that people have adequate income, the forces that will come to bear on the costs of those social programs because Canadians do not have adequate income will be absolutely overwhelming.
If Canadians do not have the funds in retirement, we are not going to say to seniors, “Go sit on the street corner”. We are not going to say to them, “Sorry, you are not eating tonight”, and “Sorry, your heat is not going to be available”. It is going to come to the doorstep of government. This problem is going to land on our laps one way or the other.
We can put our hands over our eyes, ignore the problem, and do nothing about it today, or we can pass on a debt to the next generation or have the terrible choice of either paying for it or having people be in these terrible situations.
What we are saying is that the imperative is to act now.
I would encourage us, in the spirit of trying to move this forward, to take the time remaining to us to have a dialogue on the basis of what more we can do, that we set aside the faux arguments and the faux indignation about this issue of time allocation and acknowledge that we have had more than sufficient time to debate this issue. What we need to do is look at what more we can do. What we need to do is get on to the rest of the important business this House has to undertake and recognize that we do not have that much time in which to do it.
I look forward to getting to the vote. I look forward to seeing these measures implemented and to making sure that Canadians are able to have the retirements that, after a lifetime of working, they so richly deserve.