Finance committee  It's simply inaccurate, and I take exception to the accusations. I think the member should check his facts.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, it's quite an accusation, and it's inaccurate. At the meeting, which was held at a nursing home with which I had some relationship, the then minister for seniors, Julian Fantino, was one of our headliners. We had members from all parties deliberately, because it was

Finance committee  That's not accurate.

Finance committee  I don't know if I have a point of personal privilege, but frankly, that's inaccurate.

Finance committee  Well, we're using the straight calculation of approximately 6.7% of Canadians today living in poverty, out of the number of 4.9 million seniors at the last census, so that brings us to about 300,000 people today. Those are the people under the official poverty line, not those who

Finance committee  We don't have actuaries. I think your focus, if I understand your question, is whether or not they're worried about the future for other retirees being able to get public pensions. Is that the essence of the question?

Finance committee  There is a concern, of course, as to what has happened with the stock market. It affected them personally. They didn't need to look at the CPP to see how well it was or was not doing. In the 2008-2009 crash for everybody, CPP also sustained quite a significant loss. Most people

Finance committee  Absolutely.

Finance committee  Absolutely, but I shouldn't lose the opportunity to thank the government for those changes that have been brought forward, many of which we have both asked for and supported, of course. Actually, that's why we're optimistic when we're asking for these improvements.

Finance committee  I must say that the support and opinions have evolved. I think that originally there was support for a CPP enhancement before there was a change from that and the focus went to the PRPPs. Now that people have had a chance to look at the PRPPs and realize that they would be insu

Finance committee  In fact, we're very concerned about it. It's not so much on the off-loading between the jurisdictions, but that individuals will be hurt by this. We appreciate that the government, in announcing the changes, acknowledged that there is a category of people who would be affected

Finance committee  In actual fact we were surprised by it, but we also were asked about it a month before, by a journalist. Although we didn't take that as fact, we nonetheless did our research to see how our members would respond to such a proposal. When the announcement was made in January, we al

Finance committee  Well, we realized there was going to be an increasing number of people reaching aged 65, and that's a fact. However, the burden of that group is a set amount. We estimated some $2 billion to $3 billion a year, which is a sizeable amount, of course. However, our recommendation was

Finance committee  Yes. At this point, according to Statistics Canada, approximately three million Canadians provide some care for an older person. It's also estimated that some 25% of that number are people who would be considered to provide heavy care; they would be the kind of people who would h

Finance committee  Absolutely. There is a need for any vehicle that gets more people out there saving for their own retirement. As well, after people have saved it and not spent it, their money has to earn enough to keep them in retirement. The CPP does that exceedingly well for a number of reasons