Social Policy in Ontario

Stephen Harper’s anti-pension obsession hits Ontarians

Posted on July 18, 2015 in Social Security Policy Context

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TheStar.com – News/Canada – Stephen Harper’s decision to stab Ontario in the back — and middle-class Ontarians in the front — over the province’s efforts to create a public pension sets a new low.
Jul 17 2015.   By: Martin Regg Cohn, Provincial Politics

ST. JOHN’S—People of goodwill can disagree. But why does a prime minister of ill will have to be so wilfully disagreeable, so reflexively destructive, when playing electoral politics?

Stephen Harper’s pettiness in trying to sabotage Ontario’s legitimate efforts to create a public pension for middle-income workers sets a new low in gamesmanship. It will only take money out of the pockets of workers, taxpayers and employers who will be forced to pay higher fees because of the federal intransigence.

Whether or not you agree with it, the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan emanates from a strong electoral mandate won a year ago by a premier who campaigned actively for it. The ORPP is designed to help working people, especially younger, middle-class workers who need to close a looming retirement income gap at a time when decent private pensions are fading as fast as full-time employment.

Harper’s decision this week to stab Ontario in the back — and middle-class Ontarians in the front — may go down as one of the most offensive, retrograde and thoughtless blunders ever committed by a sitting prime minister plotting his re-election on the backs of prospective pensioners.  His Conservative government is toying with the futures of young people who face a lifetime of precarious employment without proper pension coverage.

Ontario’s plan is being designed by some of Canada’s foremost pension experts as a cost-effective, low-fee program that parallels the successful Canada Pension Plan — a CPP that Harper stubbornly refused to expand, despite public calls from most provinces and confidential advice from his own former finance minister, the late Jim Flaherty.

The toxic letter to Ontario penned this week by Harper’s henchman, Joe Oliver — Flaherty’s successor as finance minister, and the MP so cavalierly misrepresenting Toronto’s Eglinton-Lawrence riding — sets a new low for shabby politics and shoddy public policy ahead of an October federal election.  “The Ontario Government’s proposed ORPP would take money from workers and their families, kill jobs, and damage the economy,” Oliver writes with fatuous hyperbole in the undated letter leaked to the media before it was even transmitted to Queen’s Park.

Rather than presenting substantive arguments or serious research, his letter quotes shamelessly from the small business lobby that speaks only for vested interests, not public interests, and makes wild claims about economic impacts — scenarios contradicted by the federal government’s own internal research, which the Tories have distorted in the past.

“For these reasons, we will not assist the Ontario Government in the implementation of the ORPP,” the letter concludes acidly. “This includes any legislative changes to allow the ORPP to be treated like the Canada Pension Plan for tax purposes,” notably RRSP contribution limits.

Astonishingly, the Harper government will refuse to collect pension deductions on Ontario’s behalf or provide any information to assist the plan — services for which it would have been fairly compensated by the province. In short, it’s not merely a hands-off attitude but a hands-to-the throat approach.  This from a federal government that has beseeched Ontario to join the Harmonized Sales Tax, and to take over collection of corporate and personal income taxes on the province’s behalf, in order to reduce costs and simplify compliance for business. In recent months, provincial and federal civil servants had been working quietly behind the scenes to streamline implementation of the ORPP, until the Harper Tories opted for confrontation over collaboration.

The result of the PM’s partisan tantrum? Higher accounting and compliance costs for business, and additional government funding made necessary by the same federal Tories who always claim to be reducing red tape and cutting waste.

Despite the attempted sabotage and subterfuge, this new roadblock will not derail a pension plan that has democratic legitimacy and economic rigour.  In Newfoundland to meet her fellow premiers, Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne, shared the news of Harper’s latest scheming shortly before their summit broke up Friday. The premiers had already agreed to revisit the goal of an expanded CPP, and officials from several provinces are part of Ontario’s technical working group on the ORPP.

Wynne described Harper’s move as “one of his last actions … as a prime minister obstructing the retirement security of the people of Ontario.”  Harper may think he can “deep-six this,” Wynne speculated in an interview. “That’s not going to happen, because I’m committed to it — I know that it’s needed.”

Now, with Ottawa fomenting national disunity, Ontario is getting advice from Quebec’s federalist government on how to set up its own stand-alone pension plan, modelled on the Quebec Pension Plan that operates parallel to but separately from the CPP. It will work just fine, but the waste of time and money being forced on Ontario by Ottawa’s supposedly cost-conscious Tories is unconscionable and indefensible.

Unless you’re a prime minister who’s just in it for himself — and will collect a public pension paid for by the rest of us.

< http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/07/17/stephen-harpers-anti-pension-obsession-hits-ontarians-cohn.html >

Tags: ideology, jurisdiction, pensions, poverty, standard of living, tax

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