Look at the flock of turtles!

Vincent J. Curtis

18 Dec 2013

Like trout rising to the bait, the media are covering Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s agitation to improve the Canada Pension Plan as if it had merit.  It does not occur to the media that she is engaged in a ploy to change the subject from her own government’s problems as an election looms.  The media love the smell of red herring.

In acting like Wynne’s stenographic pool, the media are being reeled in.

The universe of Canadian pension planning includes not just the enforced savings method of the CPP, but also RRSPs, tax-free savings accounts, tax favorable investment instruments in addition to the OAS and company pension plans.  The CPP was never meant to keep the pensioner in the lap of luxury, but to keep them at a minimum standard of living should all else fail.

Since inflation has not been a problem for the last decade, the CPP should not be inadequate according to the terms in which it was conceived.

By mounting a hue and cry over, of all things, the Canada Pension Plan, Wynne hopes to gain sympathy with the low-information Ontario voter (whom she regards as a segment of her base) prior to an election, and divert their attention from the manifold problems of her government, awash in scandal, waste, incompetence, and mismanagement.  She can’t balance the Ontario budget, and defers a decision on road tolls or higher taxes as means of paying for the decongesting of Toronto.  Mismanagement of the energy sector and a bad case of regulation-itis by her predecessor has left Ontario’s economy languishing.  The Federal government cannot balance its own budget despite booming oil revenues because the Ontario economy is not performing as forecast ,and hoped for.

So Lynne gets out of her lane and makes a stink about a Federal matter, and the media just report on the spectacle as if what she said made sense.  If Lynne had pointed to the sky and said, “Look at the flock of turtles!” the reporters covering her would turn to where she was pointing.  Seeing nothing, they would report that "Kathlene Wynne saw a flock of turtles."

 

It never occurs to anyone in the media that Wynne might be trying to create a fund from which the Ontario government can borrow at discount rates in the same way the Canadian government borrows from the CPP.  That money collected ostensibly for a pension plan is a way of paying for the infrastructure needed to decongest Toronto.  The collection of a pension contribution would not be a "tax" or a "road toll."

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