Editor:
Our pension schemes were planned back in the day when trade unions were on the rise and perhaps assumed to be expanding. Also then assumed was that one could count on a good job to take a person all the way to retirement. It was an age of relative prosperity, growth and market profits for most small firms.
But in ideological ignorance, neglect or complicity, our governments have fostered a culture of union bashing. Adopting the theological mantra of small government, they even attacked their own unions. Even privatizing crown jobs to further cut job security and pension plans sustainability.
Governments further deregulated investments and banking to promote the age of financial bubbles. They even rewarded the worst speculative engineers of the financial collapse. Shrinking predictably the Canadian markets and growth.
Now the economic partner in collapse, Harper wants to rob the egg nest of savings set aside to meet the old age security demands expected, or is it a hint that the books have been cooked, the cash shoveled out to banker’s bonuses?
The public debate should not first be how we can fix the empty account but who in government and the financial industries do we jail first, before they run their boodle to a Swiss bank. Where was Harper when he pointed to our problem?
Dee Shoolingin
Duncan