Status of Women committee  If you leave the public service and your pension hasn't vested, you can take the money out, but it's your portion and your portion alone.

Status of Women committee  Say, for example, you decided to teach English or learn French or do something overseas and you were gone for a period that exceeded...so that you had to cash out your pension. You weren't 40, your pension wasn't vested, and you chose to take the money out. If you come back to a public sector job and you have the option of buying back that pensionable time, you buy it back.

Status of Women committee  No. If you get divorced, it's subject to the Pension Benefits Division Act. Is that what it's called? Your spouse, your legal spouse--

Status of Women committee  We all know that legal cases can get very complicated. If you're not divorced and you're cohabiting with somebody for more than 12 months, things can get very complicated legally. It's my understanding that you do designate your beneficiary. The worker has the responsibility to designate the beneficiary of a benefit in the event of death.

Status of Women committee  I think having a national summit on pensions or a national summit on gender equality and women's full participation in the economy would be a grand thing. I would definitely want to be there. I'd send some cards and ask you to invite me. Seriously, though, I think this is a huge issue.

Status of Women committee  There's an interesting dynamic in a union environment. We hear from our union members. We don't oftentimes hear from our union members' surviving spouses. We have a free life insurance policy that our members access and we hear from members' surviving spouses when there are any problems accessing that free benefit.

Status of Women committee  You know something? I don't know when the Public Service Superannuation Act came into being—Was it 1954?—but it has been changed and improved along the way. It has been amended.

Status of Women committee  No, you get 50%... If I had worked 35 years and I had a full pension, I would have a 70% pension, and my spouse would get 50% of my pension. Using the table that we had, table 4 on page 6, if any of the individuals in the final column in 2008 were to die--and were married prior to being 65--their surviving spouse would have the benefit of 50% of what that pension is.

Status of Women committee  I have to agree, and it's my understanding that some changes have been made to broader pension legislation quite recently with respect to the funding of pension plans--I believe it's private sector plans--to ensure that plan trustees will be able to keep larger surpluses on the books for longer periods of time, as opposed to having to resort to pension holidays, payouts, or increased benefits.

Status of Women committee  I completely agree, Madam Chair. I think the statistics show in Canada that the higher your socio-economic class--for lack of a better word--the better your health is, the better your full participation in society is, and you are better able to function more fully. That's definitely what we're committed to seeing, not only for our members, but truly for all Canadians.

Status of Women committee  The survivors' benefit for those who participate in our plan--and I had to refer to my technical expert, and I apologize for that.... Our members accrue a benefit of 2% per year of full-time work, and the survivors' benefit is half of that. So if I had a spouse and I had been married to my spouse for ten years and something unfortunate happened and I died, my spouse would get 10% as a survivor's benefit.

Status of Women committee  I have to be really honest, Madam Chair. I think it's really unfortunate when there is a miscalculation or an error made and the people who are supposed to be benefiting from whatever the program is pay for the error. I think that is really very unfortunate and obviously should somehow be corrected in the long term, although I can't speak to the specifics.

Status of Women committee  I would have to ask for some clarification with respect to what you mean by private pension plans vis-à-vis public pension plans. If you were talking about a defined benefit plan, as opposed to a defined contribution plan, I could answer that question more readily, but talking about a public versus private plan, I'm not entirely certain of what you are looking for.

Status of Women committee  The larger the pension plan, the more spread out the risk. I'm not an actuary. I want to say that very clearly: I am not an actuary. I am absolutely not a pensions expert. But I understand the concept that risk is diluted with more people in the pool. We certainly support a defined benefit pension plan.

Status of Women committee  Thank you for the question. With respect to our members who work at the Museum of Civilization and the War Museum, they work for the museum corporation and do participate in the plan. Unfortunately, many of those workers are term hires, so they're not permanent employees and don't actually have full access to all benefits available to permanent and indeterminate staff.