Editor, The News:
Re: Conservatives committed to protecting retirees (Letters, Feb. 8).
The only thing the Conservatives are committed to protecting is their rich corporate friends.
A multi-billion-dollar tax break so corporations can increase their bonus structure and dividends to shareholders means that the cupboard is now bare.
Oh, dear, no funding for health care.
Oops, no funding for Old Age Security.
Are you next on the chopping block?
In typical Harper government fashion, when Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budgetary Officer, suggests that OAS is sustainable, the Conservatives attack him personally rather than provide solid information to support their position.
Numerous economists have stated that although there will be some pressure for a decade, the OAS is sustainable with the projected growth in GDP.
The cruelest way to deal with any shortfall in OAS funding is to make people wait two more years because that creates the greatest hardship for those who depend on CPP and OAS in their retirement.
It would make much more sense to lower the level where taxes begin for seniors or, better yet, raid the MP pension fund – it seems to be rather generous.
This government is ideologically opposed to programs that distribute wealth and benefit the average Canadian.
In typical neo-Conservative fashion, they spend irresponsibly and create a bigger deficit, give tax cuts to the rich and then use this crisis they created to cut program spending.
At this rate, we won’t recognize Canada by the time they are done.
It’s all about transferring wealth from the poor to the rich.
Bob Goos
Maple Ridge
Just not right
Editor, The News:
Re: Changes to pensions, long ways off: MP (The News, Feb. 1).
MP Randy Kamp thinks that denying Canadians Old Age pensions for two years is “ensuring the retirement security of Canadians”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, experts from the OECD, leading universities, and the government itself have all said our Old Age Security (OAS) program does not face major challenges, and there’s no pressing need for change.
Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer says that Old Age Security is sustainable beyond the year 2082.
Payments today cost 2.4 per cent of our national GDP.
When the Boomers max out in 2031, that percentage will climb to 3.1 per cent, but then drop off again.
Conservatives like Mr. Kamp are really trying to raid your retirement savings to pay for their extreme ideological agenda.
They say current seniors won’t see their benefits cuts, but they aren’t saying anything about tomorrow’s seniors – hard-working Canadians who have based their retirement plans around having Old Age pensions available to them.
The fact is, more than half of Old Age pensions go to seniors earning less than $25,000 year.
Canadians workers have paid taxes their entire careers, expecting that these benefits will be available to them when they turn 65.
Raising the age for OAS will mean that some will have to stay longer in the work-force, whether they’re physically up to it or not.
Seniors’ poverty rates could rise by one-third.
That’s just not right – not in a successful country like Canada.