Finance committee  Thank you very much. Thank you to the members of the committee for giving us the opportunity to appear before you today and to present our views on Bill C-25. My remarks to the committee today are developed and amplified in the written submission that I believe you all have befo

Finance committee  I am.

Finance committee  I think what the Australian example shows, and it's fairly instructive, is that competition has been, at least in the Australian example, deemed to be ineffective in bringing down fees. The Cooper review of the superannuation guarantee system in Australia found pretty extensively

Finance committee  Yes. I just don't think there's any evidence that it's likely to have that impact. The last time that CPP contributions were increased substantially—65% between 1997 and 2003—the unemployment rate fell steadily and continued to fall for another five years after that. What we're t

Finance committee  CPP has a very large scale, $150 billion in the fund, millions of members in the plan. That's the basis on which, combined with professional management, sound governance, and public administration, there is an ability to keep costs low. With PRPPs we really don't know what we're

Finance committee  I don't want to take your time. I just want to point out that virtually all Canadians, employees or self-employed, belong to the CPP. It's around 95%. With respect to putting all of your eggs in one basket, it's important to remember that in the OECD, Canada is way below the ave

Finance committee  There is an element of cost I want to touch on, actually, that hasn't been raised in the discussion. That's the cost of taxpayer-funded programs, such as GIS, which are already on track to increase from about $8 billion today to about $23.5 billion by 2030, when the baby boom coh

Finance committee  The problem I have is that the insurance industry in particular—but other providers—already market DC plans and group RSPs to small and medium-sized enterprises, and there's very little evidence of significant take-up there. There just has been for so long.... When there's an opt

Human Resources committee  Thank you to the members of the committee. On behalf of the Canadian Labour Congress and President Ken Georgetti, I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you. CLC represents 3.3 million workers across this country, as well as dozens of affiliate national and int

Human Resources committee  Very quickly, I want to endorse what Paula said. I think this is a public policy issue that can be addressed through government reforms. I think there has been a wholesale shift toward an employer-driven immigration and migrant worker strategy, whereby employers have been given t

Human Resources committee  To clarify, wind down the temporary foreign worker program for those classifications, yes.

Human Resources committee  Thank you for the questions. I can answer some of them. The question about the use of and increasing reliance on a temporary foreign worker program to solve long-term labour market needs is a good one, and I think that's where we find ourselves today. I haven't seen any projecti

Human Resources committee  Thank you for the question. One of the confusions in this whole debate is the issue of how to get at legitimate, genuine labour shortages. Much of the justification for policy-making on the assumption of labour shortages is very subjective. It's business owners, employers, repor

Human Resources committee  I am saying the unemployment rate itself doesn't necessarily indicate the existence of labour shortages. Ironically, one measure of labour shortages is wage pressure, but one of the functions of the temporary foreign worker program expansion has been to suppress and to hold down

Human Resources committee  Well, I—