Canada’s poor seniors targeted by Tory OAP cutbacks, CARP says
Canada's advocacy group for seniors is crying foul after another Conservative government announcement on old age pensions yesterday revealed... nothing new at all.
During a highly anticipated pensions speech yesterday, Human Resources Minister Diane Finley added her weight to an increasingly cloudy debate on changes to Canada's Old Age Security (OAS) system, the latest since Prime Minister Stephen Harper boasted of coming reforms to stave off costs in Davos, Switzerland several weeks ago.
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“They are manufacturing a crisis,” said Susan Eng, advocacy vice president of CARP: A New Vision of Aging, in an extensive interview with the Vancouver Observer. “I am disappointed they would treat an important issue like this.
“There's absolutely no need for them to do it this way... reciting the same basic talking points which have not been accepted by people. Because the government has not given any real details, everybody is guessing. Our members and others like them are fearing the worst.”
CARP (formerly the Canadian Association of Retired Persons) has launched a “Hands Off OAS” campaign, and said that cuts to pensions – speculated to include extending the retirement age from 65 to 67 – will hurt the poorest Canadians, many of whom are seniors. According to CARP, 250,000 seniors fall into the low-income rate.
The latest salvo in the pensions controversy came after Finley defended her government's as-yet undefined pension reform – namely, a coming wave of retiring Baby Boomers, demographic shifts, and escalating costs to the system – at a major speech Tuesday before the Canadian Club in Toronto.
Seniors outraged over erosion of safety net
Implicitly addressing critics like CARP and the New Democratic Party (NDP), Finley insisted that pension reform “is not a crisis we invented” – but the bulk of her speech seemed aimed at younger Canadians, not current retirees who the government said will be unaffected.
The government has asserted that OAS costs will skyrocket from today's $36 billion to $108 billion by 2030.
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(4) Comments
This is an interesting group..who are they? They run expensive late night TV shows to attract new members...but I get the feeling they are really representing a professional level of retired (union)? folks, not in other words your average guy..as they claim.
I have to admit that the situation looks bleak if seniors continue to be a huge proportion of the population with fewer earners to help fund their pensions. But instead of reducing output, let's add input. The pension plan like Medicare was designed for a birth rate of 2.2 and was set up when birth rate was over 3.0 so there was no problem. The vision was simply to make sure that every generation created enough new taxpayers to keep the fund afloat. But our birth rate now is 1.6 and of course we are in trouble. The answer is to encourage births. The problem is not too many seniors but too few babies coming up. If we are in panic mode about what would happen in 20 years, well isn't that useful that it takes about 20 years for a baby to become an adult and if we got on that right away, with birth bonuses, and universal mat benefits and income splitting we'd solve the problem!
To think this way requires long term thinking but it is the solution that will work in perpetuity. To think this way also requires though a shift in mindset, to look at children not as burdens that keep us from useful work, but as vital members of society. Their existence is something we need. Their care is something all society should respect. We need a new cult of moms. Seriously I have been telling governments this for twenty years now and if they had listened we would not even have the problem today. But to look back is pointless. Let us however look ahead and not keep making the same mistake.
Australia and Singapore, Korea, Germany, Norway , Sweden and Italy have put in place new policies to value births. They get it.