Harper says `major' changes coming to pension system

Note to Bob Rae: Yes, we have a pension problem: John Ivison | Full Comment | National Post

The bottom line is something has to change and the sooner the better, as putting it off will only make it more onerous later. I'm a person who partially relies on my OAP, but I would agree to having it cut back 10% if every other pensioner with a gross income of over $50 grand a year would agree to the same thing. The problem is here and it's no use bickering over it. Let's change things in the most painless way while we still can. Time to be proactive!

Well this is precisely the problem.

By raising the age limit from 65 to 67, those who were supposed to receive more from OAS because they have a lower income will get screwed.

I'm wondering if Harper and Co. aren't focussing on the wrong criteria. Perhaps need rather than age should be the basis for changes.

Perhaps 95 should be the new retirement age!

At 95, you

Spinning truth Tory strategy

The scale of the backlash over Prime Minister Stephen Harper's proposal to revamp Old Age Security was clear in the hyperbole shouted from the government benches Thursday.

One Tory MP after another stood during the debate over an NDP motion to "reject calls by the prime minister to balance the Conservative deficit on the backs of Canada's seniors," or during member statements and question period to accuse their rivals of "scaremongering."

None of the backbenchers, ministers or even the prime minister bothered to defend or even explain what Mr. Harper meant in telling a European audience last week that Canada would move to secure its retirement income support program. Instead, the government's line is that the Opposition simply is trying to panic seniors by raising this issue.

If that's the Opposition's intent, it's working. Ottawa press gallery members report that Conservative MPs showed up at Wednesday's caucus meeting ready to beg for a retreat after hearing from constituents seriously concerned that the government would be attacking seniors' entitlements.

However, the strategy of turning the table on the Opposition has proven in the past to be a successful one for this government. As Globe and Mail columnist Jeffery Simpson wrote recently, the Conservative government has increased the number of information officers across all departments by 16 per cent - this at a time when it has clamped down in an unprecedented way on the amount of information the public is allowed to get.

Some of these new information officials could be picking up the workload of officials from the RCMP, military, environment, and other agencies who used to speak directly to Canadians before the government began forcing them to vet their messages through political minders.

Even this practice has its political pitfalls, however. This week The Canadian Press reported on a media event staged by the Immigration Department for Sun News, with ministry officials posing as immigrants. The government's explanation is that this was an error by a minor departmental official and Canadians should forget about it.

Also this week, Philip Cross, a senior economic statistician with Statistics Canada, resigned in part because the agency was clamping down on free speech and because he was forced to use questionable data after the government made the formerly mandatory long-form census voluntary. The comment by Industry Minister Christian Paradis was that he is delighted that the response rate for the new survey was so high.

But turning the message on its head is a critical strategy for the Harper government. As Postmedia columnist Stephen Maher points out, by cutting taxes, driving up spending and transferring an increasing share of the burden for flagship social programs such OAS and health care to the provinces, the Conservatives have put themselves in the ideal position to slash federal programs under the banner of fiscal responsibility.

All they have to do is to keep those information officers busy trying to convince Canadians that the Tories are doing the opposite.

I saw on the news tonight, the N.D.P. and the Liberals (like a bunch of idiots) are starting to raise big protests. We haven't seen anything to protest yet and if there is we don't know what it will be. They are as dumb as my dog, who when I pretend to throw a ball takes off "after it". What they SHOULD be doing is looking at demographics, making some educated guesses as far as financial developments and coming up with a plan that is least detrimental.

There are objective reports showing OAS is sustainable, and that the cost saving measures from raising the retirement age will progressively hurt seniors the lower their income.

Meanwhile, there are other measures to make OAS more efficient without changing the retirement age requirement for that benefit.

These are material facts that, regardless of your "affiliation," have been brought to the Tories for examination, but are being ignored.

Believe me, I've been watching question period and been following this issue intensely. The opposition fields these questions, and the government is spinning it based on the false assumption that demographics changes will mean unsustainability.

The numbers don't bear that out!

Could you link to these "objective" reports?

I would sure as Hell be interested to see it. This has very little to do with politics. We know the proportion of seniors is rising rapidly as many people now are living into their 90s. That is going to put a huge strain on healthcare as many of the seniors are being kept alive with pills, hoses and needles. We know the race as a whole is getting less and less healthy due to terrible lifestyles like eating junk food and spending hours on end on the couch with very little exercise. So we are going to wind up with old and disabled, the middle aged and disabled, the young and disabled, so we know many who won't qualify for OAP, also won't be able to work due to health concerns. Who is going to be left to foot the bill?

OAS is OAS and it is dependent on how many years you have lived in Canada after the age of 18.

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GIS is different.

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Wrong. Full OAS is fixed income. GIS is dependent upon income.

Wat about this part......
From your link
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That was the message that came through loud and clear on "Cross Country Checkup"!

Yep, Déja-vu

I forgot this part in my quote

DON'T. If you can possibly pull the plug and live frugally but healthy, go for it. I had planned to do the "65" route, then about 6 months previous to the big 60, changed my mind. Not sorry.

Now 68, and have had a lot of fun between 60 and now, which I wouldn't have had by working.

But, hey, if someone wants to work till they drop, let'em go for it. Helps to pay my pension. Harpo's too. God bless the little con prick.

BTW:::::::::Harpo can't change the pensions. Colpy said so. So, once again, Harpo's full a sh it!!

Ok. I missed that part. Generally, I bet not that many pensioners are getting $70K or more a year, though.

Heheh! I certainly am not....If it wasn't for spousal RRSP's that we cash every year, I would probably even get a little bit of supplement since they calculate how much of that you get with the combined income of you and your wife

Go through the thread - there's an article about it. The report was even prepared by the government themselves.

Is that still happening?

I haven't heard of radical environmentalists doing that for awhile.

Convert all those billion-dollar prisons being built in the context of a falling crime-rate into old-age care centres.

Replace the iron-bar gates with normal walls and doors, and use some paint and furniture to make to rooms nice.

Have room-service for those incapable of shuffling to the mess-hall.

Replace the guards with health-care workers.

I know... that would be giving the refocons a way out of the dumbness of building billions of dollars of unnecessary prisons, but actually, I really don't care who's in charge anymore insolong as they can govern with one-tenth of a chicken-noodle's strip of sense, regardless of how warped was their path to power. After all, it was a Pope who bought the Papacy to, upon achieving power, use his position to campaign against people being able to purchase the Papacy.

*Sigh*...

The issue is whether or not people should be *forced* to retire at 65.

I know in people in their 70's who are working harder now than when they were 9-5 workers in their 50's.

The difference is, they get to pace themselves.

They get to choose when they start to work, and they get to choose to stop when they don't feel like it anymore. If that's four hours a day, then two of them do as much as one young person, so that mops up some issues about insufficient "working-age" population.

All organizations have lots of jobs where it doesn't matter what time of day it gets done, as long as it gets done.

Let elders who want to keep working but on a temporary flex-time basis form clubs.

etc. etc. The sky's the limit. I know people from Asia who wonder about the issue of forced retirement, because they strive to always find something to do no matter how old, if they can, even if it means shucking just one cob of corn per day, in order to earn their meal.

In other words... yes it's true that if one changes the age of forced-retirement/forced-employee from 65 to 67 then just those two extra years of CPP contributions will bring the plan back into balance, but *really*...

... You can get the same affect by letting those unable to work stop, while letting those who want to keep at it but at their own pace keep going.

Growth. Growth?

Just out of curiosity... when has it "grown" enough?

At what point has it "grown" enough for the powers-that-be to lean back with satisfaction and say, "Ahh... we've grown to the perfect level of balance of our population with our natural resources."?

When single-celled eukaryotes got the idea of forming multicelluled organisms, I bet some of them went through phases of thinking they should keep their body growing forever.

Why did evolutionary pressure cause them to (evolutionarily) choose to halt things at some point for an organism to be declared an adult?

Why do the hangers-on to the notion of perpetual growth get called cancers?

Such joy.

In the old days power-rushers had to use armies to fight for a tax-base in order to build castles.

Now they just buy the people's government and buy the media to brainwash the undecided into voting for the neo-monarchist candidates, and as a bonus get the benefit of having a shield between themselves and the peasants in the form of a "government" whom the people get the goofy idea of having chosen while wondering why the government they elected does not do what it was elected to do, which is govern things into betterness.

*Sigh*...

Then mandate it for people to smoke and drink as much as much as possible, and drop all work-place safety requirements.

Ooh... as goes the Canadian economy, so goes that of all western nations?

Is he trying to say that Canada is in a position to affect the economic flow of other western nations, or is he heading warning to them that if they don't stop taking care of the elderly, or if they don't stop letting people die young, then shareholders are not going to experience record profits there as well?

Lemme guess... next he's going to talk about the need for investment in science and technology, without any his speech suggesting improved automation in order for fewer young people to be more productive in order to sustain the same level of economic output.

If you get it right, you can have fewer young people driving factories of manufacturing robots and mine workers, with the right technology.

If you get it right and you have too many young people, everyone bitches about automation taking away jobs.

But he won't tell anyone what they are.

Either he's secretly pro-Canadian and was giving mouth to the Biltenburgers, or he's speaking in code language only Biltenburgers can understand, telling them to get ready for a lot of whining from Canadians.

Oh really... and what would that be?

Licensing veterinarians to practice on humans, so vets can administer lethal injections or a bullet in the head if the case is terminal?

Of course nobody's going to look at what Sweden did when faced with a similar dilemma in the early 90's.

That would be because Sweden made lemon-aid out of a seriously impossible lemon, requiring consensus on all levels of society. In North America, the last people to seek consensus are those taking joy in how north American freedom enabled twits who never would have got power in Europe to get power here, and now had never been required to demonstrate worthiness of it... all they used to have to do was show up at social functions.
That's interesting. He actually said that. The US used to have a fully-funded retirement system, but their unworthy-twits-in-power found ways to tap-and-make-faulty theirs.
Hmm... I know this might sound a bit crazy... but historically there were Albertans more conservative than blue-blooded Ontarioites... convinced they could manage things into livable and humane stability better than great-grandchildren of the Eatons-Bay Trust.

Anyway...
Private how?

That people get to deduct from their taxes that which they put into the pool, in order for the private pool managers to skim off in order to add to their buy-up-and-take-over-the-world fund?

Why private?!?

If public we get to keep an eye on the fund managers, and if public we can pay them as much as they would be paid as private fund managers, namely, what they are worth, without the overhead of feeding dividends to the while wales on the beaches of Bermuda, so it will be cheaper, which means more payout to the retirement investors.

Did you think those white whales on the beaches of Bermuda were actually managing those funds themselves, worthy of their position as dividend-collecting shareholders because only their brains could keep the fund working, or did you not notice how they paid the election funds of legislators willing to pass laws saying that fund managers must maximize dividend profits regardless of the heartfelt sense of the investment?!?

If you go back to Nuremberg, where it was declared by the victors that following orders is not excuse enough, then does it not follow that an Executive, VP, or Fund Manager can refuse to make an evil investment just because it boosts shareholder profits for the white whale on the Bermuda beach?
Not if you let them stay healthy in a healthy environment and healthy food surrounded by family and friends in a place where they get to work as much every day as they want/can.

There are villages in Mallasia where the 70-year olds bounce around playing volley-ball. They are thin, eat balanced diets, get agitated when not allowed to do work when feeling like it and can. They live among family and friends they grew up with since three. They are hated by those raised in families with it drilled into their heads that they would never have achieved such success if not born in north America.
[quote]
In December, the National Post reported that there was internal debate within the government about increasing the age of eligibility for the other major element of the public pension scheme - Old Age Security - from 65 to 67.

Internal government documents project the cost of the OAS system will climb from $36.5 billion in 2010 to $48 billion in 2015. By 2030 - when the number of seniors is expected to climb to 9.3 million from 4.7 million now - the cost of the program could reach $108 billion.

Among the other priorities where change is coming:

Energy
The Conservative government will make it a ``national priority'' to ensure the country has the ``capacity to export our energy products beyond the United States, and specifically to Asia.''
[quote]
Something about that is so twisted.

It blows in the face of NAFTA, and... I dunno... it's like... earlier PM's would have ensured that in combination with that guarantee of tar-oil to Asia would be a multi-lateral defense treaty making it impossible for anyone to attack Canada without it causing a global war (I think Laurier was best at that).

What is Harper guaranteeing? That China gets accused of adding to climate change faster by burning more tar-oil?

Delay for the sake of delay...

That means Harper's speech-writers don't know the difference between sustained versus catastrophic nuclear reactions.
Nobody talked to natives all the way up to fort Chip about how they might find it within themselves to look the other way about contamination of the Mackenzie river system from leaky ponds if they were trained and hired to work refineries to sort the ingredients of the tar-sands into stuff members of other industrial nations will have to pay if you're the only provider.

Nobody ever noticed how the first thing to happen when whites landed in America was Natives traded, before European idiots showed up after being kicked out or let go by Europe.

Not one of those pin-hole MBA brats unqualified for their position noticed how Natives said if you want to trade, then let's trade, and let us take over pipe-line/tar-sand security (aka the guys walking around in suits with handheld devices protecting against terrorists instead of being accused of being them).

Why does it require reform, and what is "significant"?
Which means, I cannot get in a cousin, and I cannot get in a smart friend, but if I know a smart-cousin, he gets in?
We will ensure that every time we make a breakthrough it gets fed to the US more efficiently, and with better return on the royalties in order to lower taxes as a return on investment compared to blunders like getting ahead with the Avro Arrow without offering to sell it all to Uncle Sam before destroying it.
So stupid.

No sense of timing... no sense of history.

And clearly no intelligence.

Right now... at this moment... as we speak... Japan is prepared to enter into a free-trade agreement with Canada... and I do mean only Canada (such that certain future natural throttles shall have to be put on trade with other nations)...

Japan is prepared to enter into a whole all-out trade agreement with Canada... and only Canada... like unto nothing that has eer been engaged with nor traded with any nation on the planet.

The world's strongest, most quality and best-advanced product makers on the planet... first dibs on goods ten years before anyone else except Japanese get it... in exchange for mineral resources.

They do not want to all emigrate here.

They want it to stay pristine as Banff in order to visit.

And diplomats on both sides are hanging over their rye and sake weeping about how it's not going to happen, because the job of a people able to get a dumb kid into power never counted on that power becoming a global influence.

Will *some* reporter please ask him what he's going to burn to keep us warm after the hydrocarbons are gone?

Uranium?!?
Growth growth growth.

Is it growth if after achieving size one starts applying the same energy to quality, such that your civilization starts becoming more beautiful?
Actually it is... when properly managed.

Poverty is when idiots get in charge.

Let’s debate OAS based on fact, not perception

Certainly, the sustainability of the OAS and CPP/QPP is worth a public discussion. But such a debate should be based on fact, not perception.

We are told, for example, that OAS will cost Canadians $108-billion in 2030, up from $36.5-billion today. While both figures are correct, they’re meaningless on their own. What we need to know is whether such costs are affordable in a growing Canadian economy. Is the system unsustainable?

Thankfully, the answer already exists. The Chief Actuary of the OAS system reports regularly (and publicly) on the system’s financial health. In his last published report (the eighth, in 200, he confirms that the cost of OAS (including the Guaranteed Income Supplement) would rise to $108-billion in 2030. He also points out that, while there were 4.7 Canadians aged 20 to 64 per individual aged 65+ in 2007, that ratio would fall to 2.4 in 2030, or almost in half.

But there are other attributes that need to be remembered. First, OAS is taxable income, so a lot of the moneys paid out go straight back to Ottawa. Second, the OAS is further clawed back depending on your income. If your income exceeds $67,668, then you lose your OAS at a 15-per-cent clawback rate. If you have income of $110,123 or more, you get no OAS at all.

For the GIS, the clawback rate is 50 per cent starting at $3,500, so if you have income in your own right of $16,230 (other than the OAS), you get no GIS. Finally, OAS/GIS costs rise with the consumer price index, whereas tax revenue rises with the growth in GDP. The latter usually rises faster than the former.

So do we need to worry about the sustainability of OAS? Not according to the Chief Actuary.

Let's debate OAS based on fact, not perception - The Globe and Mail

Old Age Security sustainable, says budget watchdog - Politics - CBC News

This was what Harper said to him after he found out that monks are burning themselves in Tibet.

Wasn't high immigration levels, 250,000 per year since 1990, supposed to supplement pensions? That's what the three federal parties said about immigration for decades. Perhaps if we had taken in mainly young people instead, and not older people who haven't worked for at least 30 years we wouldn't have this problem. But I don't think Harper's going to go through with it, not until he cleans up MPs pensions. And that the OAS is sustainable.

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For the Harperites, its always cuts, tax cuts or pension cuts.

As I have said before if Harper,(Snidely Whiplash) invokes major changes to the pension plan
the citizens especially old buggers like me will trudge a hundred miles in the snow to bring a
major change to his entire government in the next election. Even those who are financial
wizards have said there is nothing wrong with the present set up. Therefore it is a long standing
policy of the old Reform Movement to make changes to pensions needed or not.

The Harperites want to turn Canada into Argentina where they privatised their pension system some years back. Re-election is in the bag now.

Your grandkids will also be trudging 100 miles in the snow, but moreso to pay for the pensions that are being demanded today.

Like who, gotta link maybe?

You do realize that with the boomers retiring that the costs (incl pensions) are set to increase by a huge amount and all that in the face if having a smaller tax payer base to draw from.... Did your financial wizards take that into account?

You sure got a hard on for Harper and the Reformers dontcha?