One woman talked about pension reform. Should we increase the guaranteed income supplement? That affects women, most of the time. Every year, I laugh when I receive a notice telling me the amount I can contribute to an RRSP. I say to myself that it will take a long time before I can get to that point. That mainly concerns more well-to-do families.
Single-parent families have average incomes of between $25,000 and $30,000. So they won't be able to contribute to an RRSP overnight. Over the long term, that pushes back the age at which they'll be able to retire.
In Quebec and elsewhere, when people talk about reforming pension plans, there's increasing talk about people retiring much later. They want to raise the retirement age rather than lower it. Women, among others, are very much affected, because most of them are already poor. They don't want to stop working, because they won't have any money and won't have contributed enough to a pension plan. Until what age will they be working? What are their living conditions and quality of life? People are living longer and longer, but are they increasingly rich? That's another question. In my view, we also have to consider that point?