Finance committee  I would be happy to have the officials from FINTRAC, who are here, give you the details of their reason for the increase in their expenditures, if you wish. Is that okay with you, Mr. Chairman?

Status of Women committee  Funds that an employer has already put into a solvency fund are protected in bankruptcy, and they go to fund pensions. Amounts due from the employer to the fund that have yet to be remitted, such as a payment due on Tuesday after a company failed on Monday, are also given priorit

Status of Women committee  I will be hard-pressed to do justice to this in ten seconds. There is a very significant trade-off between the company's ability to borrow and fund its operations and its prospective obligations in bankruptcy that would rank ahead of that other funding. If there are many things

Status of Women committee  Thank you; I'd be glad to. We're speaking again of the legislative and regulatory framework governing private pension plans in federal jurisdiction. Here the reform proposals were grouped under five principal headings, which I will reiterate and then elaborate upon a little. The

Status of Women committee  Yes, this is the Coles' Notes version. The first item is enhanced protections for plan members. We've already discussed a couple of these. In addition, there are the employer contribution holidays: an employer deciding to stop contributing because, by their calculation, the pe

Status of Women committee  This suggestion came forward from some quarters in the consultation that we were just discussing. The federal government, as you can see, by omission did not proceed with it. The view animating that decision, which was expressed by many others in the consultation, was twofold. Th

Status of Women committee  In the proposals the minister put forward, there were a number of additional incentives for employers. One was to increase the ceiling on the tax-deductible contributions to the solvency fund in order to encourage a greater margin. Another was the option for employers to use prop

Status of Women committee  In terms of the pension plans that are federally regulated, the minister proposed...

Status of Women committee  If I have understood you correctly, you are asking us what advice we would give to those who administer pension plans in the private sector.

Status of Women committee  I would advise those who are federally regulated to take advantage of the new flexible measures that the minister's proposals will lead to in order to better capitalize their plans. There will be an increase on the limit for taxable contributions and there will be opportunities t

Status of Women committee  There will also be new rules in order to strengthen the types of protection referred to in the press release. That is all the time I have.

Status of Women committee  Yes, I'd be glad to. We began with a discussion paper that was released in January, called “Strengthening the Legislative and Regulatory Framework for Private Pension Plans”. We had an online consultation, and we received a great many submissions to that consultation. Those for

Status of Women committee  It is certainly the case that within the space of registered private pension plans that defined benefit plans are smaller as the share of participation in defined contribution plans are rising. I think there are a variety of reasons for this, and there are a number of theories th

Status of Women committee  Yes, I'd be glad to. The jurisdiction decision as to which level of government is responsible for the regulation of a private pension plan depends, in the first instance, on what sector the employer is in. Certain sectors fall under federal jurisdiction, and then failing that, i

Status of Women committee  The federal-provincial working group of officials on pensions was established two finance ministers meetings ago. It would be rude to whip out my BlackBerry to figure out when I first chaired one of those; it has been a number of months on an organized basis, but it's not as if w