Status of Women committee  It can be changed, but there's a cost to it, and the cost is high, both marginally and absolutely--absolutely in the sense that a pension plan by itself is already something that is very expensive. So to add to it is not easy, because a 50% survivor benefit is already quite expen

Status of Women committee  Yes, but with the defined contribution plan there is no explicit survivor benefit. There is one, as you say, because there are some assets left, but the later you die, the lower are the remaining assets, so it's not--

Status of Women committee  There is always a way, but a defined contribution benefit is normally designed this way to be simple. So basically, it's not designed for that purpose. But there's always a way to deal with that. Each individual would have to do something with it personally by setting a portion o

Status of Women committee  Any poverty-related problems that people have should not prevent the government from implementing measures like pension splitting, which was implemented yesterday. Whatever poverty problems exist should be addressed one way or another. I mentioned the GIS earlier. There may be

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.

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  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  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  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  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

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.