Status of Women committee  There has been work done at Statistics Canada in the past, by Dr. Leroy Stone, on the value of unpaid work. As for where that research stands now and what he concluded at the end of that, I'm not sure. I'm sure there are some documents summarizing what he has done that we could s

Status of Women committee  Thank you.

Status of Women committee  The 22% and the 29% in the private sector are the gross unadjusted rates. It's virtually all women, all men, with no attempt to make comparisons among those who have comparable levels of income. Now, with this data source, the question is on limitations of the data. For example

Status of Women committee  My understanding of the CPP--and if there are HRSDC people here, they can correct me if I'm wrong--is that the contributions are based on years of earnings, but that there is a formula to exclude years of low earnings or non-earnings; I think it's your seven lowest years of earni

Status of Women committee  The viability of purchasing RRSPs, obviously, and the economic and the tax advantage of investing in RRSPs would vary across the income distribution. I think it would be an overstatement to say the vast majority of them are concentrated at the very bottom of the income distributi

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  The issue of income replacement rates is one that I would approach as a basket of indicators that one uses to assess the financial well-being of seniors. It is very possible to have a woman who has very modest attachment to the paid labour force through her working life, then at

Status of Women committee  Yes, that's right.

Status of Women committee  What that table shows is that for women in the private sector, 22% have an employer-sponsored pension plan or a registered pension plan. The defined benefit, defined contribution, and mixed plans are part of that 22%. There is an interesting point to be made here. Take as one's

Status of Women committee  Seventy-eight per cent don't have coverage under a registered pension plan. That proportion would be reduced to the extent that people have group RRSPs, which are not included in this database.

Status of Women committee  That's correct.

Status of Women committee  Think about Canada's retirement income system as comprising three tiers: OAS and GIS are the first tier, the Canada Pension Plan is the second tier, and registered pension plans and RRSPs are the third tier. While the majority of women in the private sector do not have a register

Status of Women committee  In the taxation data we have here, you'll notice that the absolute numbers that are reported within age groups vary somewhat because different things are included within these figures. The taxation data are based on something called the pension adjustment that's reported. That's

Status of Women committee  Could I add one thing on that issue? One of the issues we face when we do surveys of this sort and ask people in telephone interviews about their pension coverage and so on is that how well they understand their retirement savings vehicles is somewhat suspect. For example, a fe

Status of Women committee  No, we haven't.