Despite howling from the Conservatives and the Fraser Institute, Ottawa and the provinces have reached a deal to expand the Canada Pension Plan. A short time ago, such an outcome seemed impossible. However, Canadian Press reports:
Following weeks of talks and an all-day meeting in Vancouver on Monday, finance ministers emerged with the agreement-in-principle.
Even provinces such as Saskatchewan and British Columbia, which had expressed concerns about the timing of CPP reform, had signed on. Only Manitoba and Quebec declined to agree to the terms.
The agreement came together as pollsters pointed to overwhelming popular support for public pension reform amid concerns about the adequacy of retirement savings.
The federal Liberals ran on platform to upgrade the public pension system, as did their Ontario cousins. The result also means Ontario will abandon its project to go it alone with its own pension plan.
Why such an abrupt change in the winds?
Sources familiar with the talks said doubters had concerns about the potential economic impact of boosting the CPP, even at the late stages of negotiations.
They said Ottawa made a major push in the final days and hours, which helped secure enough country-wide support to expand the CPP. To make the change, they needed consent of a minimum of seven provinces representing at least two-thirds of Canada’s population.
The sources also suggested Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself was involved in the extra effort.
On top of that, Ontario, which had been moving forward its more-ambitious pension plan proposal, backed away from its earlier demands that CPP reform should be just as robust.
But, then, isn't that how democracy is supposed to work?
Image: nupge.ca
8 comments:
The title Conservatives needs two extra words in order to understand their message. Those are cheap and labour as in cheap labour conservatives. Repeat often, cheap labour conservatives, cheap labour conservatives, cheap labour conservatives . . .
Now we understand the Party, its membership and the likes of the Fraser Institute and the Manning Centre; all cheap labour conservatives.
Same groups tout the TPP. Traitors to Canada if not humanity.
We'll see, Steve. My kids won't have the same pension I have.
One of their chief directives, Toby, has been to drive down the cost of labour.
The true parasite on society is an "entrepreneur" who opens up a company with the express intent to pay minimum wage. Tim, hey Timmy, come back here! It's all owned by 3G Capital out of Brazil these days and a chintzier operating philosophy would be hard to find. Hey, why bother coming up with a real outfit that expands and pays good wages, when you can run a franchise off the sweat of others and have a damn good life from the proceeds? Or better yet be the one doling out the franchises to the fake entrepreneurs?
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is almost a self-appointed watchdog that howls its head off when something like a better CPP is propposed. "A Tax Increase!", they cry, as if it were the end of the entire world, as if their representative businesses each had to face the increase on their own in a competitive world, lonely job "creators" each caught in a bind unique only to them. Uh bud, every one of your competitors is facing the same increase for their staff too. But why mention that? It ruins the stupidity of the CFIB message that's why. Imperialist lackey dogs - my pals who run their own small business finally stopped being members of the CFIB, when the rep accused them of not listening to his latest spiel and was shown the door.
Since the average person these days is better off working a guvmint/muni job than delivering pizza, slinging lattes or defeathering 100 chickens per hour, something has to be done for that day when they finally hang up their clogs.
So I'm very happy about this CPP extension. Finally. I really didn't think Morneau and Trudeau would do it, to be honest, so it's a nice surprise.
Like the old Baby Bonus cheques, Anon, the CPP greases the wheels of the economy. The money gets spent -- not saved -- and the small business owner expands his business.
I am so tired, Owen, of these self-appointed right wing "entrepeneurs" who prattle on about how we should all pull ourselves up by the bootstraps in order to reach the lofty plateau that they have. I worked for a number of large corporations, however, as a female employee I was neither invited nor allowed to participate in an employee pension plan - just the male staff were. I was gratified when CPP was introduced because at least I would have even a minimal pension. I also contributed to RRSP when that program was introduced, but there were restrictions as to how much one could invest early on. I finally left a good paying job and took a 30% drop in wages to apply for a government job for the simple reason that I knew I would be in trouble without some sort of pension from working all those years. I am now retired and altho my work pension is minimal, it is an important piece of my overall income, especially since my RRSP, altho the % withdrawn is higher each year, I receive less and less due to the meager ROI on my investments as the cost of living increase far exceeds any increase in my retiree income. And lastly, I didn't have the taxpayer contribute $24 for every $1 I contributed to my pension such as these greedy politicians have voted for themselves. I decided very early in life that you can survive being poor when you're young, but not when you're old. How on earth do these people who oppose a modest increase in CPP expect those that are relegated to minimum wage jobs that are most likely also job-shared (less than 40 hrs/week) expect anyone to make any contributions to RRSPs etc, particularly when the ROI is something less than 1% per annum while not even being able to afford accommodation? It boggles an intelligent person's mind!
"Boggles" is the right word, Lulymay. You may have noticed that some of the loudest proponents of the bootstraps theory of wealth management were born into -- and inherited -- wealth.
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