Finance committee  Again, if we're talking about health care reform, I think the model is the 1995-96 reforms of the Liberal government. I think the current government has taken steps in that direction. I think the key, though, now is on the regulation, through the Canada Health Act, on what the pr

Finance committee  The thing I would stress most on the RRIF is a flexible framework. Whether that is dealing with the mandatory minimums to be withdrawn or the age, as I say, my preference would be to have a flexible framework so that it recognizes different people in different circumstances. But

Finance committee  That's right. It's for the RRIF. Again, I would also include in that the mandatory amount that's withdrawn on a regular basis. But, again, the larger concern I have is how OAS and GIS interact with the private, public, and provincial plans, programs, and regulations.

Finance committee  If we're talking, for example, about the private pension, much of the legislation is at the provincial level. We then need to understand what changes are going to be made at the provincial level so that they're congruous with what's being made at the federal level so that, to the

Finance committee  Well, in fact, I think the key consideration is the scaling back of benefits. So I think the marginal effect has much more to do with whether, if I get an extra dollar of income, I am putting benefits in jeopardy. Again, if you have a pension that you're now having to take income

Finance committee  I think, Mr. Chair, that one of the key things we didn't talk about was the deferral program for OAS. I know Jack Mintz at the University of Calgary is a champion of this. I think he's on the right track, because it does give the individual or the household a great degree of flex

Finance committee  Sure. I think the Liberal reforms of 1995 and 1996 to the welfare system are the framework for reforming health care. The Liberal government essentially removed most of the national standards and cut the block grant, but gave the provinces significantly more freedom to experiment

Finance committee  The changes in OAS?

Finance committee  Sorry, I didn't prepare for EI.

Finance committee  One problem that we observe in many industrialized countries is, for one reason or another, the ethos that we've created that if you don't go to university, you're a failure. Even if you look at the past 20 years in terms of government expenditures, these tend to be allocated tow

Finance committee  I'll just quickly clarify the sustainability issue. The traditional definition of sustainability is that, given current policies, it can be funded without changes over time, and the OAS is going from being equivalent to $1 in $5 of total spending, to $1 in $4. So it either is goi

Finance committee  Sorry, I just wanted to clarify why I was saying that it was unsustainable. I would be open to either of those suggestions. Again, part of the point I was trying to make post-budget, after the original announcement was made by the Prime Minister in Davos, is that there are a lo

Finance committee  My concern would be the technical process through which we're going to make those determinations. Again, I think the easy lifting, so to speak, is to identify the clawback threshold for OAS, that is, to ask the question of better targeting. And I think it's fairly easy to do that

Finance committee  I don't disagree with Andrew that there are some differences between the various lines, but they are important ones. More important is to recognize the different effect on different households. If you have two seniors who are both receiving GIS and OAS, it's a very different circ

Finance committee  Statistics Canada itself says it's not a measure of poverty.