Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and address the legislation the member brought forward to the House today. I would like to acknowledge how important the CPP is to Canadians. The CPP is a leading example of a sound pension plan, through management and governance, that I believe is recognized around the world as being so.
The member made reference to the hundreds of billions of dollars we are talking about, and this is money that belongs to Canadians. It is money being vested to ensure when Canadians retire they have a better opportunity to live an enhanced lifestyle. It is meant to put food on tables and pay for a wide variety of bills. It is something Canadians hold very closely to their hearts.
Back in the early or mid-sixties, I believe it was Lester B. Pearson, a Liberal prime minister, who brought in the pension plan, believing at the time that Canadians needed to have such a plan to ensure once they retired they would have the funds necessary to enjoy retirement. We have seen it evolve into what it is today, a fund recognized around the world that continues to grow by billions of dollars every decade.
What the member is attempting to do here is indeed very noble. I have spoken in the chamber in the past about the social corporate responsibilities of doing the right thing, and at times that means one has to take action. I want to pose a very important question to the member: To what degree have the provinces been brought in to this debate?
For years I sat in opposition and would challenge the Harper government as to why it was not working with the provinces to increase the CPP contribution. After years of no increases, I believed we were limiting the potential dividends being paid to people retiring once they hit the 60 or 65 age category. I realized back then that it took the support of the provinces, through negotiations, for any real changes to be made to the CPP. We can talk a great deal about it and debate it inside the chamber, but we need to be able to extend that hand to our provincial and territorial jurisdictions so we can have the dialogue.
I believe there is a very important gap that needs to be addressed. I am hoping to hear in particular from members supporting this legislation on the degree of work they believe should have been done in that area. We went through many years of Stephen Harper where there were no negotiations.
One of the things I talked about in the past is that shortly after forming government back in 2015, the Prime Minister mandated our ministries to look at ways they could reach out to the provinces and address the need to increase the CPP.
I am not 100% sure, but I think the Conservation opposition day motion coming up later today is actually in opposition to some of the increases we are proposing for CPP.
It is not easy to accomplish what this government has, in regard to increases in the CPP, so that people will have more disposable income when they retire.
If members talked at length with seniors in our communities, they would find that retirement funds are absolutely critical. That is one of the reasons we left the CPP increases with the provinces, in terms of the negotiations that took place, but we also looked at other pension funds, such as the guaranteed income supplement and the old age supplement. We saw increases shortly after we took office in 2015. We used those mechanisms during the pandemic to give additional one-time payments to seniors. These actions clearly demonstrate that the government has an interest in retirement pensions.
On the issue of how we invest in those retirement pensions, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has done well for Canadians for many years now. It has demonstrated that in the returns it has received for the monies collected through workers. I have immense respect for the work it has done. The investment board has a spectrum of things it considers prior to making those investments.
The types of changes the member is proposing we pass today need to be discussed with our provincial and territorial partners, at the very least. We are talking about over a quarter of a trillion dollars. That is literally hundreds of billions of dollars.
I floated a question to the member regarding RRSPs. We are talking about hundreds of millions, to billions, of dollars. Canadians invest in RRSPs, which are tax subsidized. Would the same principles that the member is talking about here be universally applied to those? When I posed the question to the member, his response was yes. If the answer is yes, then we are talking about other financial institutions: the big banks and those others that invest in RRSPs, and other forms of government assistance toward retirement. It opens into a new area of human rights. That is a much larger picture.
The member made reference to corporate social responsibilities. We could look at ways in which we have, through private member's bills and government bills, tried to influence corporate behaviour. It does not only apply here in Canada, but around the world for Canadian companies no matter where they operate. That is why I said, toward the beginning, that what the member is attempting to achieve is very noble. There is a much bigger picture we need to look at.
My time has expired and I am thankful for the opportunity to share a few words because I realize how important this issue is. Citizens of our country want the government to act where it can.