Finance committee  Spending went up by 43% in the last 10 years, in that 10-year period, whereas population growth is a proxy for needs, right? If the population grows by 11%, ceteris paribus—all other things being equal—revenues and expenditures should grow by that much or by some approximately equivalent level, but it went up by four times the population growth.

Finance committee  Potatoes are very important, sir.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I grew up on a farm so I think that's pretty important.

Finance committee  It's powered down. I'll need the technician to log back on. Just quickly, if I may, we're fifty-fifty female-male, by the way, at the Sprott School of Business. I just wanted to put that on the record for Ms. Raitt—

Finance committee  —because I thought it was a very important question.

Finance committee  No, this is assistant, associate, and full, because we've been hiring a lot of female professors in the last five or seven years. I will submit to the committee a package of about 50 slides, all sourced from OECD or StatsCan, and not manipulated by me in any way, shape, or form, because that's the way I do my research.

Finance committee  I want to echo what Mr. Kobly said, and I've been arguing this in my research in different areas including social policy and for that matter account policy. I really think that you have to target. It's the same idea as in business; we talk about focus. I think there's no good argument for universality, whether we're talking CPP reform, where most people do not need help but some people do.

Finance committee  Number one is targeting, because to put it really bluntly you're wasting money. If I can go back to CPP reform, because everybody knows about it and I've published two papers on this that are peer-reviewed, large numbers of us don't need it. Why would you want to reform CPP to make me pay more premiums, when I have a gold-plated pension at Carleton University that I think exceeds the Government of Canada's?

Finance committee  I promise you I will send the committee my two papers. I don't get royalties on this so this isn't about money, but I'll answer it very quickly. There's another urban legend that Canadians are completely dependent on the so-called first two pillars, which are OAS-GIS and CPP. That's simply empirically not true.

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm going to present slides in one moment, but I just want to state that I have been a full-time tenured professor at Carleton University's school of business since 1987, teaching business, economics, and public policy. This is my 29th year at Carleton.

Finance committee  I'll skate through these really quickly. Elder poverty, likewise, has collapsed from very high levels to one of the lowest in the world. We're at the very bottom of the OECD. In terms of pension readiness, 83% of Canadian households are on track to retire without a problem. We do have a problem in Canada, but it's a small problem.

Finance committee  Right. I'm very sensitive to this issue, obviously, as I'm in a classroom. My students are always 22. Every year I get one year older and my students keep coming in and are 22, because I teach only fourth year. I'm very conscious of this whole “generation screwed” thing that's been started by the professor at UBC.

Finance committee  I understand where you're going. I listened very carefully to Ms. Daviau's explanation, which I thought was excellent. It is an accounting entry under accrual accounting. I'm very familiar with accrual accounting, I teach it in my classes and I also came from a bank, where we certainly dealt with this sort of issue.

Finance committee  Because of past Auditor General's recommendations to move the Government of Canada to accrual accounting, which was long overdue, the government is moving through the Treasury Board and the OCG, the Office of the Comptroller General, and so I think that it is legitimate. Even though to many people accrual accounting seems very strange, it is legitimate.

Finance committee  Yes.