Part 4

Steve: When you say, "how you spend that is up to you," you can spend that on going out to dinner, and traveling to Hawaii, or- Howie: No, how you spend it is determined on a set, cafeteria-style of benefits. In other words, there'll be a disability benefit, there would be a major medical benefit, there'd be a dental benefit, and there'll be a disability benefit, and it would be up to you to determine what benefit you wanted to participate in on what level. And of course, that's determined of course by if you're married, or single, or if you're married and have a family, etc., etc. Steve: And now, of course, we're talking about health programs, but in Canada, of course, a lot of the health costs are covered by the national health scheme. So are you providing that additional, this is filling in the holes, or what kinds of services do you provide?

Howie: The typical major medical plan provides services over and above what the provincial health care plans provide. In other words, private or semi-private rooms in a hospital. It would pay for prescription drugs. It would provide a certain amount of physiotherapist visits per year. It would pay for appliances that you may need for a disability, like crutches or a wheelchair. So there are a number of different items that the typical provincial health plan doesn't pay for, and this will pay for in addition to that. Steve: Now, maybe another question as we come near the end here. People all work hard, they want to be protected against the uncertainties of the future, they want to manage their money wisely. Have you any bits of general advice, in terms of investment strategies, how much money to put aside, how one should live one's life to mitigate against the uncertainties of poor health, or old age, or whatever? Carrie: One thing I would like to stress, though, is that it's never too early to start, and if you can make small contributions, like ten percent of your income. Just set something up that's automatically withdrawn, put into an RST. In terms of planning for the longer term, be very well advised to do so, because a lot of people put this off, you know, they think, "I don't have to think about retirement until my forties," but the younger you start, you know, if you put it into a tax-deferred structure, where, you know, it can just grow and you've got the compound interest working in your favor, you'll be well-served in the future. So ten percent.

Howie: Certainly, from our experience, part of our clientele is not significantly from immigrants to Canada, and I don't know if that's culturally-whether they are believers in using life insurance, etc., or they're more of a believer in looking after for themselves in that fashion, so we haven't had that much-well, I wouldn't classify it as success, because I guess we haven't really marketed to that segment that much. I mean, I know in Japan, they are significant buyers of life insurance. With respect to Southeast Asia, I'm not sure. Having said that, I know that Manulife in Canada has a significant presence in Southeast Asia. In China, yes. You know, so obviously, there is a market there, but our firm has not had that experience. And again, it's not because we don't believe it's there, we just haven't coordinated our market efforts toward that market. I believe now our firm has become more that way, because I think that the new people that we've attracted are attracted to the firm because of that, so I think they're like-minded. It has certainly not been an involvement that is based upon increasing our business. I would suggest to you that the people that our in our firm just naturally think that way. I know from myself, personally, with my father, who always said life in the community is like a business. If you take more out of it than you put in to it, the community will go bankrupt, whether that means financially or physically or whatever. Certainly, that's kind of the overlying philosophy. You have to put more back in to the community than you take out, and I think our firm does that, but it's not by design. I think it's just grown that way. We've attracted those kinds of individuals. Myself, personally, I've always been very involved in politics, starting at a young age. At eighteen, I was in provincial politics, and became very seriously involved in civic politics in Vancouver, and I'm also on the board of directors at the YMCA of Greater Vancouver, and have been so for ten years, and that is my focus now completely. The firm itself-we range from being involved with our [inaudible] association, one of our partners was significantly involved and instrumental in bringing the Greater Vancouver Open, which subsequently became the year Canada opened the PGA Golf Tournament, which was designed that all the proceeds would go to charity foundations in the Vancouver area. We're involved in the Sports Hall of Fame. I know that one of our partners is significantly involved in the Jewish community. So I guess there's no real master plan of what we're trying to do here. It's just that people get involved with things that they seem to be interested in. Steve: Well, thank you very much, Carrie and Howie. I think that's been a very interesting discussion about things called financial, and also about one company involvement with the community. Thank you very much.