Statement made on 08 October 2009 by Senator Art Eggleton
Hon. Art Eggleton:
Honourable senators, we provided the leader's office with this question in advance to give her an opportunity to gather any information she needed.
Honourable senators, there are growing concerns that many Canadians have not saved nearly enough for 20 years of non-working life. It is estimated that roughly five million Canadians, one third of the workforce, are not building enough of a private nest egg to avoid a significant drop in living standards when they retire. Almost one in three Canadians has no retirement savings at all.
If many seniors' living standards fall drastically and some slide toward poverty, the impact for Canadians and the country as a whole would be staggering. It would lead to more cash-strapped elderly and a rising bill for society because of the declining markets for goods and services purchased by seniors, declining tax revenues and increasing public welfare costs.
In May, the federal and provincial finance ministers formed a working group on pensions with a mandate to table not a policy paper but a research paper. Can the leader in the Senate provide an update on the progress of the working group and what the government's plan is on turning the research into policy?
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