Paying the bills (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 5:30 PM - 0 Comments

The CBC reports the government will cut deeper into departmental budgets than previously planned. The Finance Minister raises the possibility that some departments may have to cut more than 10% from their budgets.

The Post reports that the Conservatives may try to adjust MP pensions, but the Finance Minister seems to defer.

On the issue of whether changes are afoot for the pension plans of members of Parliament, Mr. Flaherty said that is a decision for the House of Commons Board of Internal Economy, not the government.

The Board of Internal Economy is presently composed of three Conservatives, two New Democrats and a Liberal. Its meetings are conducted in camera.

If demographics is destiny, the future looks relaxing

By From the editors - Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 2:00 PM - 6 Comments

David J. Green/Alamy/Getstock

There may be a silver lining to Canada’s looming grey wave.

An aging population, we’ve been warned repeatedly, threatens to put unprecedented pressure on our health care and pension systems. This tidal wave of baby boomers will inevitably swamp existing social programs, steal funding away from education and child care and dominate all levels of politics for decades to come, say the doomsters.

Now for the good news: whatever impact demographic destiny may have on public policy, it seems set to produce a country that’s as cool and calm as a cucumber, and with plenty of time for fun. Suddenly the future is looking…relaxed.

Last week Statistics Canada released an intriguing, if under-reported, study on how Canadians spend their time. The report is part of StatsCan’s General Social Survey, an ambitious undertaking that involves 15,000 Canadians filling out daily diaries. Evidence from last year was compared with similar answers from 1998; the results suggest a dramatic decline in the amount of tension in our lives.

Continue…

Policy alert

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 4, 2011 at 5:16 PM - 0 Comments

Jack Layton promises pension reform.

To remedy this issue, Layton said an elected NDP government would immediately work with the provinces to double CPP and QPP benefits. But he would allow Canadians to “prop up” their CPP savings with their personal income … The NDP believes that doubling CPP and QPP benefits could require a 2.5 per cent increase in payroll deductions. Layton also pledged to add $700 million to the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) to help out seniors in the lowest income brackets.

Policy alert

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 3:33 PM - 19 Comments

Michael Ignatieff promises pension reform.

Ignatieff says the Liberals will work with the provinces to gradually expand Canada Pension Plan benefits. He’s also promising a voluntary supplement to the CPP called the Secure Retirement Option that would let people save an extra five to 10 per cent of their pay in a CPP-backed fund. And the Liberals plan to boost the Guaranteed Income Supplement, or GIS, by $700 million a year — more than double what the Conservatives are offering.

Michael Ignatieff talks

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 2:53 PM - 57 Comments

In a set of new ads, the Liberal leader discusses Conservative attacks, pensions and family care.

The Liberals have also updated a previous ad about Mr. Harper.

The fight for fairness in foreign lands

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 3:26 PM - 13 Comments

Retired British war veterans living in Canada have threatened to publicly return their medals to the U.K. government if it doesn’t agree to enrich their pensions. Unlike pensioners living in Britain, retirees living in Canada don’t have their pensions indexed to the cost of living—some in Canada are receiving just 40 per cent of what they would get if they hadn’t emigrated. The Canadian Alliance of British Pensioners (CABP), which represents over 158,000 retired Britons in this country, has been fighting against the status quo for years. Britain does not index pension benefits for emigrés in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, which don’t have reciprocal agreements with London, leaving it up to those governments to supplement the income of its impoverished pensioners. That’s costing Canada around $330 million a year, and Ottawa has long been eager to resolve the issue, but London always turned a deaf ear, according to Brian Lechem, CABP’s chair.

The International Consortium of British Pensioners, of which CABP is part, initially brought the battle to the courts, but after losing appeals in both the U.K.’s supreme court and the European Court of Human Rights, it’s now turning the fight political. While the former Labour government never paid much attention to the issue, Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats and deputy prime minister in the Conservative-led government of David Cameron, has traditionally been a supporter of the cause. With a friendlier government in charge, “we’re pushing like mad,” says Lechem. That also included leaving a book at 10 Downing St. about war veterans with non-indexed pensions. But with London on a financial austerity crusade, the odds may once again be against Canada’s British seniors.

The Commons: Let us now amuse ourselves

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 at 5:44 PM - 32 Comments

The Scene. Jack Layton stood and suggested that perhaps the government might work with his party on a “New Democrat plan that would make life more affordable for our seniors.” Alternatively, he suggested, the government could “could choose Bay Street and more corporate giveaways.”

Across the way, various government members chuckled. But this was apparently not intended as a joke. ”Clearly,” Mr. Layton lamented, “that will be the Conservatives’ choice, judging by the reaction in their back benches at the moment.”

The funny Mr. Layton had intended to make came a short time later.

“Mr. Speaker, it seems the Conservatives have made their choice,” he said. “Their preferred option for fixing the pension system is to take the big banks approach. It reminds me of that ad we see on TV: the Bay Street model does not work. The managers take up to 40% in fees. We call them egg management fees.”

This was, apparently, that funny. Continue…

Viewer discretion advised

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 9:35 AM - 10 Comments

A professor regrets advising his students to watch this week’s pension debate.

Given he is teaching a third-year course on retirement and pensions and had recently weighed in with a call for a higher retirement age, Prof. Hering asked his students to watch the exchanges live on CPAC, the Parliamentary channel. “Since the level of debate was so disappointing, I felt bad that I asked them to watch it,” said Prof. Hering…

Public pensions for the private sector

By Peter Shawn Taylor - Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 3:40 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

Pensions and toddlers don’t often go together. They do now in Manitoba. Last week, the NDP government announced it will provide a pension plan for all daycare staff in the province. An estimated 7,000 workers will qualify, including those who offer child care out of their home. It’s proving a controversial move.

The new $6.6-million-a-year policy creates a defined-contribution pension plan for staff working at privately run non-profit child care centres. Payments will be made to retroactively recognize up to 10 years service. For home-based daycares, the government will contribute up to $1,700 a year to the owner’s RRSP. All this is in addition to increases in provincial wage subsidies over the past decade that have pushed starting salaries for daycare workers in the province to $32,000.

Continue…

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.

'Should you be interested in making our minority Parliament work'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 15, 2010 at 3:51 PM - 13 Comments

Apparently in response to a request from the Prime Minister, Michael Ignatieff writes to inform Mr. Harper of all the issues the Liberals would be keen to work on when Parliament resumes, including cap-and-trade, pension reform, pay equity, government oversight, mental health, maternal health, veterans, prorogation and Afghan detainees.

Without a plan

By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 10 Comments

Dale Seto is accustomed to toiling out of the spotlight. Most days, the aircraft mechanic crawls around inside the guts of an Airbus jetliner, grease on his hands. “We’re kind of the underdogs,” says Seto, 57, who has worked for Air Canada for the past two decades. “But in my opinion, we perform the most important function in the entire airline industry, and that’s making sure that the planes are safe and ready to fly.”

Hundreds of thousands of lives depend on the quality of work done by Seto and his colleagues, but he says the industry’s perennial woes means they haven’t had a pay raise in nearly a decade. That helps explain why he and12,000 Air Canada employees represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers jealously guard their defined benefit pension plans, an increasingly rare species of retirement income in the private sector. More than just a perk, defined benefit plans—in which the employer guarantees retirees a certain level of benefits—are viewed by workers as a key element of overall compensation. Continue…

The Commons: Unsophisticated debate will not be tolerated in this place

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 6:25 PM - 40 Comments

The Scene. Ralph Goodale stood and the Conservatives, obviously quite eager to hear and consider his particular concern this day, were yapping and squawking before he’d so much as spoken a clause.

“Mr. Speaker, survey after survey about the H1N1 vaccine show a dangerous trend. Only half of Canadians are planning to get vaccinated. That is down from two-thirds in July. Too many people do not think it is safe, do not think it is necessary. That is a communications failure that could put lives at risk,” Mr. Goodale posited. “How does the Prime Minister justify an advertising tsunami of $100 million for partisan Conservative propaganda, but only a pittance for crucial information about vaccinations?”

The Prime Minister, alas, was not present. In his place, Tony Clement took a turn.

“Mr. Speaker,” he said, “the honourable Minister of Health is doing an excellent job in communicating to Canadians about the H1N1 flu situation.

“She has said that the vaccine would be available to every Canadian who needs and wants one,” Mr. Clement reported on behalf of Leona Aglukkaq, seated perhaps 20 feet to his right. “Not only is the Minister of Health urging Canadians to get the vaccine but the Chief Public Health Officer is doing so as well. This is the best way to protect our health and the health of our loved ones. Despite the fearmongering on the other side, we are focused on protecting the health and safety of every Canadian.”

To better convey this fearmongering, the Industry Minister wiggled his fingers in the general direction of the opposition side. Continue…

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.”

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.

The war for workers

By Rachel Mendleson - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 8:15 AM - 28 Comments

Jacob Gamache never thought he’d end up in the public sector. “There is a stereotype that the government of Canada is very slow,” he says. Seeking a faster-paced, more competitive environment, Gamache used his master’s degree in sports administration to land a job in 2005 with a private, non-profit organization in Ottawa. Though officially the manager of communications and events, Gamache, now 28, says he was somewhat of a “jack of all trades,” creating pamphlets, updating the website, and offering tech support to his co-workers. “I got an opportunity to learn a lot,” he says of the job, which required plenty of overtime. “You come in in the morning at 7:30 or eight, and you’re not too sure when you’ll go home at night. When you do, the laptop comes with you. And the cellphone.”

By the fall of 2007, Gamache was ready for “something a bit more stable.” On a friend’s suggestion, he applied to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), a federal funding agency—and one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers this year. He took a job with the agency in May 2008 and hasn’t looked back. On top of solid benefits, an enviable pension and a higher salary, he says there’s plenty of opportunity to advance. (Despite his misgivings about the limits of bureaucracy, he’s already been promoted to project officer in a little more than a year.) What’s more: while the recent economic downturn has seen hundreds of thousands of Canadians lose their jobs, he’s had “no worries” about holding on to his. When asked whether he would consider returning to the private sector, Gamache says, “It would be a very tough sell.” Continue…

Call for ideas

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 2, 2009 at 4:28 PM - 11 Comments

Bruce Anderson wonders if a massive health care crisis might change the current leadership paradigm.

With health and pension reform, there will be political winners and losers. Often in the past, losers have been those who tried to tackle hot issues, and were scalded. Winners were those who stood back and attacked initiative, finding its weakest point and decrying change, while not necessarily offering an alternative. This may continue to be the pattern for some time, but not forever. At some point the craving for solutions will become too strong, and the leader who presents powerful new ideas with persuasive skill, has a chance to create massive and longstanding competitive advantage for their party.

The Commons: Shovel-ready answers

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 6:41 PM - 39 Comments

The Scene. At each MP’s desk, a red box had been placed with a gift package of sporting equipment intended to celebrated the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. While he waited for Question Period to begin, Peter MacKay removed the swimming goggles, put them on his head, then put one of the socks on his nose. 

Class resuming after a week off, the mood was relatively light. The 15 minutes before Question Period included just one shouted denunciation of the Liberal leader. The Speaker advised that he would be looking into a report of unparliamentary language made before the break. Then Michael Ignatieff stood in an attempt to be serious.

“Mr. Speaker, the country is facing record unemployment, record bankruptcies, record hardship for small businesses, especially auto dealers,” he began, congratulating the government on its acheivements. “And still the stimulus is not flowing. It is nearly June. Cities and municipalities are still waiting for the infrastructure funding that was promised in the budget. The government has already missed the June construction season. Why has only six per cent of the stimulus gotten out of the door?”

The Human Resources Minister was in Oshawa, reannouncing something from January’s budget. The Finance Minister was in Quebec, warning that the wild guesses on which that budget was based now seem “substantially” off the mark. The Prime Minister was unaccounted for. So the day would belong to John Baird.

“Mr. Speaker, we are working co-operatively with provinces and municipalities,” the Transport Minister said. “We are getting the job done. That non-partisan work is really paying dividends.”

Having not said a single thing of any consequence, he proceeded to read into the record something Mr. Ignatieff had said that seemed to be only vaguely related. Continue…