PV Ontario Bureau

     The pension reform proposals announced on Oct. 27 with much fanfare by Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will only affect federally regulated private pension plans, representing about 7% of pension plans and 10% of retirement savings in Canada.

     While the changes may improve the security of pensioners covered by these plans, it will do nothing for millions of Canadians who are not covered and whose pensions are evaporating in corporate bankruptcies and insolvencies, lapsed corporate contributions, and collapsing pension plan investments.

     The Canadian Labour Congress responded to the announcement with a call for comprehensive reform to protect and improve the pensions of all Canadians, and a national summit bringing together governments and other stakeholders to do it.

     "We believe the best way forward is to increase benefits available under the Canada Pension Plan, to improve benefits under the Guaranteed Income Supplement so that no senior lives in poverty, and to provide a national system of pension insurance. People who have spent their lives contributing to our country should not be left to fend for themselves in retirement," said CLC President Ken Georgetti.

     Nortel Network workers, who have organized mass protests on Parliament Hill and Queen's Park through September and October in hopes of goading governments into action to save their pensions, will get no relief from Flaherty and the Tories. Like those of the vast majority of workers, their provincially regulated pensions go up in smoke when their employers go bankrupt.  

     Bankruptcy laws put workers' pensions at the bottom of the list, as corporate creditors move in to devour the carcass of the bankrupt company. After the big dogs have eaten, there's rarely anything left and the workers - whose pensions are their deferred wages - are left with nothing.

     The Communist Party of Canada has been campaigning for more than a year, demanding the federal government take immediate action to protect the pensions, savings and jobs of workers all over Canada from the effects of the global economic crisis.  

     Like the Employment Insurance reforms, it's far too little, far too late, according to the CPC.

     "What's needed urgently is a universal public pension plan with substantially increased pensions, and a reduced voluntary pension age of 60 for men and 55 for women", says the CPC. "In order to get it, Canadian workers and the organized labour movement will have to build a mass movement to fight for pension reform and to defeat this government which has done everything in its power to assist the corporate sector to cut workers wages, pensions and benefits. This is going to be a major battle for labour and the people's movements; the same as the battle to maintain and extend medicare and universal social programs in Canada."