Finance committee  Thank you very much. I have with me our executive vice-president, Barbara Byers, who will comment quickly on pay equity. I wanted to focus my comments on employment insurance, or unemployment insurance--I still want to call it unemployment insurance, because it seems that whe

Finance committee  It wouldn't take much for me to want to vote against the package itself, because it doesn't help the people who are the innocent victims in this process. Let me put it into perspective. The home improvement program, the one we call the Home Depot program, gets six times as much a

Finance committee  I think this budget should be voted down. I think it should be voted down for three key reasons. One, it only achieves one percent stimulus. I was in Washington, D.C., on the G-20. Our government agreed to spend two percent; they're only spending one percent. The victims of thi

Finance committee  Let me be clear. The only two labour groups who were consulted after the economic update and before the budget were the FTQ and the CLC, for a total of 58 minutes. That's the only worker consultation that happened. The only time we were consulted was when they thought their jobs

Finance committee  We would agree with you completely, with one caveat. One of the risks of work-sharing is you diminish your qualifying hours for unemployment. What usually happens is people go into work-sharing, they lose their hours, and when the work-sharing ends, they become unemployed and don

Finance committee  Right on.

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. On behalf of the 3.2 million members of the Canadian Labour Congress, I thank you for the opportunity to present our views on pension issues. However, I should point out that we actually had to barge our way into this meeting, as someone forgot to

Finance committee  Are you talking about bankruptcy protection or protecting the CPP?

Finance committee  We think it's useful. Let's remember, over 93% of Canadians are covered by the Canada Pension Plan or Quebec Pension Plan right now. We think that's a good model to use and to enhance. Private plans that we've negotiated, although adequate and sustainable, are very difficult to n

Finance committee  Well, it is indeed a role that we do play. I would be surprised.... Any pensioner, whether a prospective pensioner or an active member, who belongs to a union and wants information relative to the pension plan can get it either through the union or through the trustees--

Finance committee  I can't answer the specifics of that. As I said, all our major affiliates are very proactive on pension consultation and pension education. In fact, the Canadian Labour Congress set up an association, called the Shareholder Association for Research and Education, that publishes i

Finance committee  I'm going to have Mr. Harden answer that question.

Finance committee  I think you have to do it in three or four ways, as Joel said. First of all, with the plans that exist now, we have to establish an insurance policy on those so that the people who have contributed to that plan can continue to move forward. But I think you heard from the former

Finance committee  That's correct. In fact about 89% of our members enjoy a pension plan. Only 23% of people not in unions have a pension plan. If they don't, they have RRSPs. We have a chart at the back of our brief that shows you how much of your investment gets chewed in those usurious fees on R

Finance committee  Yes, I think that scandal deserves a lot more scrutiny than it's had so far. We were buying instruments that were rated at the highest level of security by a bond-rating agency, yet nothing has been done except for some secret meetings where they've mitigated, or tried to mitigat