Editor:
Blake Richards, our man in Ottawa, has over the past few weeks been soliciting input for the upcoming federal budget, and of late the prime minister, on his trip to Davos, has been lamenting the burden that will be inflicted upon the nation when all the people who contributed to the Canada Pension Plan decide they would like to collect from their plan.
Right off the bat it is tempting to suggest that they could ask Paul Martin for advice. He may have been a Liberal, but he was able to trim the last deficit quite handily without hiring Deloitte Inc. for $90,000 per day ($19.8 million – yes that is millions – for a six month contract – to cut spending). In fact, Martin might even do it just for his old prime minister’s salary.
However, apropos to the pension crisis I have a modest proposal. The Conservative government should take some of the money from the obscenely generous MP pension plan and credit it to ours. A recent C.D Howe report (www.cdhowe.org/pdf/BG%20146.pdf) states: “The MP plan promises much higher retirement incomes than most Canadians can dream of: the implied accumulation of wealth in these plans amounts to more than 50 per cent of pay… arguably closer to 70 per cent.”
Diehard fiscal conservatives must be horrified to hear that “this plan subjects taxpayers to financial risks few appreciate, and undermines the federal government’s authority to lead Canada’s search for a better retirement income system… these benefits are extraordinarily rich,” the report also states, lest it not be obvious. “The annual increase in retirement wealth MPs enjoy under these plans far exceeds what most Canadians can set aside.”
That’s certainly true for me, but it transpires the reason the “plan” is so “rich” is that for every single dollar an MP contributes, the taxpayer (also me) contributes five – which is about four dollars more than the average generous pension plan in either the private or public sector. And, apparently the funds in the MPs “plan” increase 10 per cent every year, regardless of market conditions, because they are not invested – anywhere.
Hence this modest proposal; the government should take some of our money out of their plan and put it back into ours. And I won’t let Stephen Harper tell me that the status quo is okay. It’s not Peter MacKay’s $130,00 helicopter junkets we are talking about here or pork barrel spending in Tony Clement’s riding, or billions of dollars for a crime bill that will cause crime to rise; it’s money I invested in a plan – it’s my (our) old age security.
Colin Ferguson,
Canmore
