Human Resources committee  Good day. Thank you for inviting the Federal Superannuates National Association to appear as a witness. We represent the Public Services, Canadian Forces and Royal Canadian Mounted Police pensioners and pensioned federally appointed judges. All these people, once they reach the

Human Resources committee  When I spoke of retroactivity, I was only referring to errors relating to pensions, the amounts to be paid by federal pensioners. But if you mean someone who applied for Canada Pension Plan benefits late, say at 68 years of age, when he should have done it three years earlier, I

Human Resources committee  I only started to read the bill late yesterday. Unless I missed something, the only thing I saw about retroactivity concerned payments pensioners owed to the government. So I don’t know if there are provisions in the bill for people who apply for their benefits late. If there

Human Resources committee  I have a quick clarification. Maybe I misled you when I talked about interest. You're right that no interest is charged presently, but in Bill C-36 there are two paragraphs to the effect that interest would be charged on overpayments. That was my concern.

Human Resources committee  No, that's fine. And thanks for the clarification about the interest, because what I saw was not complete, and this lady explained to me that this is overridden by the regulations. So no problem, and thanks for the clarification.

Status of Women committee  Good afternoon and thank you for inviting me to appear before your committee. Even though there are not many men here today, I do not feel uncomfortable. I come from a family with four sisters, and I have met a lot of women in my lifetime.

Status of Women committee  I apologize if I gave the impression that I was the only one here; I see that I am not the only man, but there are not very many of us. I was not chosen to represent my organization because of my deep understanding of women, but also because, like Ms. Rose, I do have some knowle

Status of Women committee  For younger women, I would say that the target should be those who have children. There are a lot of ways to help families through family allowances or tax measures. Generally speaking, that's where the target should be, because these are the women who, because of their children,

Status of Women committee  I apologize for misinterpreting what you said. In support of what I said about the Guaranteed Income Supplement, the points you make are correct, but I nevertheless think that this plan is ideal in the medium term because when people have income, they are covered by the plan, bu

Status of Women committee  Pension splitting is important because it corrects one of the aspects of the tax system that was not fair. If you have two couples, one in which there's only one wage earner and the other in which the two are working, and the total family income is the same--$60,000 in one case,

Status of Women committee  I don't know really what more I could say. But I want to make it clear that what was announced in the budget yesterday is only in respect to splitting of pensions. So the salaries or the active income are not concerned. I don't know, in that respect, what else I could say. I don'

Status of Women committee  Yes. Maybe to your surprise I will tell you that I'm not the only one considering that; most actuaries do. This is the best-designed pension plan in the world. It has a lot of what could be called poverty-related measures. Mrs. Rose referred to one of those. There are some othe

Status of Women committee  It was implicitly covered in the point I made earlier by proposing that the seniors benefit be reintroduced and strengthened. In other words, it means that the threshold of poverty used for the program for the existing guaranteed income supplement needs to be increased. We don't

Status of Women committee  It has no effect at all--just like RRSPs benefit people in some situations. It does not benefit single women at all. It's not damaging to them, but it does nothing for single persons.

Status of Women committee  The measure that was announced yesterday raising the age from 69 to 71 to wait before withdrawing RRSPs is beneficial to those who have higher levels of income. So it definitely does nothing for those who have poverty-related measures.