My riding of Yorkton-Melville has one of the highest per capita populations of senior citizens in Canada, so I constantly pursue pension fairness and equity with the federal government.

Canada’s seniors are fortunate to have a finance minister who goes to bat for them in Ottawa. The Hon. Jim Flaherty has been engaged in a very serious discussion with Canadians on pensions and pension security this year. As a result, we have taken concrete action to strengthen Canada’s retirement income system and reduce the tax burden on seniors since we formed our government in 2006.

In January of this year, we released for public comment a major research paper on the legislative and regulatory regime for federally regulated private pension plans. Based on the tremendous feedback we received, comprehensive regulatory changes to improve the federal pension framework are being drafted and will be released shortly.

We reviewed the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) with the provincial and territorial governments in May. All governments agreed to CPP reforms to allow greater flexibility in how Canadians retire. The reforms include removing the requirement for individuals to stop working or reduce earnings for two months to start CPP, as well as permitting the exclusion of more low-earnings years from the pension calculation.

The majority of pension plans are provincially regulated, and under 10 percent are federally regulated. At annual meetings of finance ministers in late 2008 and again earlier this year, we set up a joint federal-provincial research working group to conduct an in-depth examination of retirement income adequacy. Mr. Flaherty has also called a national summit of his provincial and territorial counterparts for this December to discuss the findings of the working group.

Our government has introduced landmark changes to ease the tax burden on Canadian seniors since 2006. These measures will provide nearly $2 billion annually in tax relief to seniors and pensioners. In Budget 2009, we increased the Age Credit amount by $1,000 for 2009 and subsequent taxation years. In 2008, we reduced the required minimum Registered Retirement Income Fund (RRIF) withdrawal for 2008 by 25 per cent, providing $200 million in tax assistance to RRIF holders and allowing retirees to keep more of their savings in RRIFs.

Our government places the needs of seniors front and centre because they should have a comfortable retirement.

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The audio version of Garry's November 23, 2009 op-ed column can be heard by clicking here