Mr. Speaker, I want to put forward a couple of points for her consideration. In order to help current low-income seniors, there are many much more direct mechanisms that put money back into their pockets. I think we did some of them—tax reductions for seniors and expansion of the OAS—and more could be done along those lines. Those kinds of reforms would actually give money back to seniors. They would not involve taking more money away from them for government to control them. I think she knows that we favour a model that emphasizes giving money back to people, and private savings.
One of the biggest advantages, as I see it, to encouraging private savings is that they create a mechanism for people to invest in interim projects. Someone could put money aside, use that money for an education, maybe to buy a home, and then realize the value of that, subsequently; whereas, if there is a government-controlled plan, the money is taken away and is put in a separate fund from which that individual cannot draw, or use at all for interim projects, until retirement.
On that basis, would she not consider that there are more effective alternatives to helping people save for interim projects, as well as for retirement, than just going with this sort of government control, all to a government pot kind of approach that is being put forward in this bill?