Searching for the Liberal Party. Day 2.

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 8:30 AM - 58 Comments

Greetings from Montreal, where, for the next three days, we’ll be hanging around the Liberal party’s Canada 150 conference. Herein a running diary of the proceedings. Day 1′s diary is here.

8:29am. Good morning. Montreal is chilly and quiet. In a few moments we will be roused by the dulcet tones of David “The Dodge” Dodge, former governor of the Bank of Canada.

8:36am. For those of you scoring at home, the colour of the lights today is orange. And the subject is Families.

8:45am. This conference was apparently the most tweeted subject in Canada yesterday. The Liberals are immensely proud of this. Continue…

Mind the gap

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 11:26 AM - 29 Comments

Kevin Page has released his latest report. The Globe got an early look and summarizes as so.

In a report released today, Parliamentary budget watchdog Kevin Page warns it’s not good enough for Ottawa to simply balance the books – because of the increasing squeeze Canada’s greying ranks will place on coffers.

He predicts that even if Ottawa slays the deficit, it will still have to confront an expanding “fiscal gap” in revenue over the decades ahead that rises to $20-billion to $40-billion annually within seven decades. This will arise as Canada’s work force shrinks in proportion to its growing pool of retirees, a trend that should both slow the growth of government tax revenue and increase demands for health-care spending and old-age benefits.

'Dear Minister Flaherty'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 3:06 PM - 22 Comments

The NDP files its suggestions with the Finance Minister, including pension reform, EI reform, municipal funding, an extension to the home renovation tax credit and a repeal of planned corporate tax cuts.

In addition to job creation measures, the Government must address the looming structural deficit, as identified by Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page. The deficit was caused, in part, by previous reckless reductions in corporate income tax rates. Like most Canadians, New Democrats recognize that in the long term, we cannot spend more than we collect. Yet your government has not only attempted to deny the existence of the structural deficit, it has aggravated the imbalance by reducing revenues despite the absence of any evidence that those tax savings have led to investments in jobs for Canadians. Your unbalanced corporate tax policy is exacerbating our overreliance on oil extraction, and contributing to a high dollar, which in turn hampers job creation and exports in the value-added sectors of manufacturing, forestry, aerospace and others. We propose that you announce the government will not proceed with additional cuts to the corporate tax rate in 2011 and 2012.

Turnabout, fair play, etc.

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 12:06 PM - 11 Comments

Peter MacKay, responding to opposition questions, October 19. I will note that when it comes to Bloc members, I wish they would spend just as much time standing up and protecting the interests of Canadian soldiers as they do for the vigour they seem to have for Taliban prisoners … The member has now asked, I believe, nine or ten questions on the Military Police Complaints Commission. I only wish he would bring that type of enthusiasm to support the men and women of the Canadian Forces.

Winnipeg Free Press, yesterday. A former member of Canada’s military says if Prime Minister Stephen Harper truly supports his troops, he’d change his government’s stance on a private member’s bill to improve the pension plans of the military and RCMP. Fred Newton, a 20-year veteran of the military in the communications branch, is one of hundreds of former military and RCMP officers pushing the Conservatives to help pass Bill C-201, a private member’s bill from NDP MP Peter Stoffer … ”You see Prime Minister Harper all the time saying we’ve got to support our troops and then (the Conservatives) go and turn around and vote against this,” said Newton. “It’s hypocritical.”

Downsized dreams

By Jason Kirby - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 10:57 AM - 20 Comments

Like most young men growing up in Thunder Bay, Ont., in the 1970s, or anywhere on the planet for that matter, Alex Cryderman was too focused on the next weekend to give much thought to his golden years. So, at 21, when he followed his father and brother into a job at the Abitibi paper mill, and learned that part of his paycheque would be held back to fund his pension, he was more annoyed than anything. That feeling changed over time, of course. And as the months turned into years and the years to decades, Cryderman, now 50, came to rely heavily on his pension savings for the retirement plan taking shape in his head. “I was going to be out of here in five years with a pretty good pension,” he says. “I was going to spend time on my boat, fish, travel with my wife, really live the good life like they say in the ads.”

Then one morning earlier this year, Cryderman awoke to frightening news—Abitibi-Bowater had filed for bankruptcy protection. Suddenly, his pension, along with those of 8,000 other employees at the company, was at serious risk. With the stock market collapse and the company no longer paying into the pension fund, the plan has become dangerously underfunded. Now Cryderman can only wait, and regret—wait to learn how much of his retirement savings he’ll be able to salvage, and regret not putting more money away on the side over the years. “If you’d have known what was coming down the pipe, you’d have lived your life differently,” he says. “We never thought this day would ever come.” Continue…

Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 1:11 PM - 59 Comments

Jack Layton talks pension reform.

NDP Leader Jack Layton is proposing a national pension insurance program to protect workers whose companies go bankrupt and leave retired employees in the lurch. The self-sustaining program would be funded by employer contributions and guarantee pensioners $2,500 per month in the event their plan is wound up.

Layton says other countries, including the United States and the Netherlands, have similar programs that adopt so-called orphaned pension plans. The NDP is also proposing an increase to the Guaranteed Income Supplement for low-income seniors – a measure that would cost the federal treasury about $700 million a year.

Our demure MPs

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, September 13, 2009 at 10:03 PM - 15 Comments

The NDP’s Nathan Cullen explains why MPs are so hesitant to talk about the possibility of losing out on a pension.

“It’s an awkward conversation for us because we’re talking about ourselves,” said Cullen. “I want to talk about the health of the country, [or] which way the government is going, and this stuff is about [personal] finances.”

Pressure rises to protect our pensions

By Julien Russell Brunet - Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 11 Comments

At long last, there is a ray of hope for workers whose employers have filed for bankruptcy. Currently pensioners, the disabled, and employees owed severance pay are treated the same way as banks and other sophisticated creditors: when a company goes under, they have to get in line to fight for a piece of what’s left with everyone else.

But a group of former Nortel employees is looking to change that. They have asked the federal government to make an emergency amendment to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to give preferred status to the claims of pensioners, the disabled and severed employees—essentially putting workers at the front of the line. Continue…

On the big screens in Vancouver, big (vague) policy hints

By John Geddes - Saturday, May 2, 2009 at 8:37 PM - 14 Comments

Usually at a modern political convention the big-screen video presentations are pure fluff and it’s the speeches that provide the odd bit of policy content. This afternoon in Vancouver, though, I heard at least as much to think about in the party infomercial that was shown before Michael Ignatieff’s triumphant march to the podium as I did in the speech he unspooled when he got there.

The video was pretty compelling, especially the part when the faces of Liberals, some easily identifiable, some anonymous (at least to me), appeared in a tightly edited sequence, each declaring a dream for the country. Here are a few that I scribbled down: “affordable child care,” “protected pensions,” “the dignity of First Nations,” “college and university available to all,” “justice applied fairly and equally.”

And here are the policy questions that occur to me as I ponder that partial list.
Continue…