Finance committee  I think we have to be careful about how broadly you make that statement, too. Because as Malcolm has said, the income earners at the bottom end of the spectrum in Canada, relative to other countries, are well taken care of. There has been a lot of work. I understand that there ar

Finance committee  May I add one comment on that?

Finance committee  The analysis that has been done so far in Britain has actually equated it to about 1.5% for the immediate future, for the next 10 years, when they've done that. When you look at it for 40 years as Malcolm does, yes, it drops down significantly, but they're looking at people who a

Finance committee  There are a couple of points in there. One is that you're referring to these as mutual funds. These are employer-sponsored plans. I know that there has been earlier communication that the cost and scale of employer-sponsored plans is very different from a retail mutual fund. For

Finance committee  Those are on individuals; this is a group. The points I've brought forward, all those things that I've put forward, exist right now within a defined contribution pension that's regulated by a province. All the characteristics already exist under the pension legislation. What I'm

Finance committee  It's not like a Nortel plan because that's a defined benefit plan. But I'm saying that while the employer sponsored it, you can stop your contributions; you can move your contributions out. But the employer's contribution should stay there while you're employed by that employer,

Finance committee  The employer has made the choice to put their plan there. The employer can move their plan.

Finance committee  Those numbers are correct. The expected annual cost was 30 basis points. They recently announced that they're going to levy a 2% charge on every contribution that comes into that plan to cover the set-up costs. They don't know how long that 2% is going to be in place. They said i

Finance committee  Well, I don't know all the details of how they've structured it, but they had to hire a number of people to support it and build the systems. Anything on that scale, a national scale, is expensive. I mean, our industry has invested in this for decades, so--

Finance committee  It's there.

Finance committee  Well, one of the advantages of an employer-sponsored plan is aggregation of people. That drives costs down to the benefit of all of the individuals in the plan. Having active employees remain in the plan and keeping their assets in the plan helps in economies of scale.

Finance committee  That gets passed on to the members. It all pushes through, so the more members, the more assets, and the lower the fees. If you restrict movement while they're actively employed by their employer, that grows the assets. It would work the same way in a pension. In any pension plan

Finance committee  I believe I was.

Finance committee  When we look at small businesses and what it takes to put a pension or a retirement program in place, especially when you get to businesses with fewer than 100 employees, they just don't have the administrative capabilities and the staffing resources to support such a thing. They

Finance committee  I'd like Shirley-Ann to support me on this answer as well, because she's representing a large population of Canadian businesses in this. I agree that there is an existing infrastructure for the existing plan, and adding on to it from an ease of use perspective is there. I think