In just a few short weeks, the Prime Minister has signalled that he intends to make the most of his majority mandate with moves to cap health-care funding and streamline approvals for energy projects. Then, in a speech in Davos, Switzerland Thursday, he put Canadians on notice to expect major reforms in immigration and research and development funding.
But it was his vow to change retirement income benefits — an area where previous governments have tried and failed — that has stirred the most reaction.
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney learned the hard way that politicians tinker with the issue at their peril. After he partially de-indexed old age pensions in his 1985 budget, he was confronted on Parliament Hill by Solange Denis, who shouted, “You lied to us.”
“I was made to vote for you and then it’s good-bye, Charlie Brown,” Denis told Mulroney, who soon backed down on the move.
Paul Martin, too, tried to reform old-age benefits in 1995 when he was finance minister, worried about the impact of aging baby boomers on Ottawa’s bottom line. But he couldn’t win over prime minister Jean Chrétien, who was wary of incurring the wrath of angry pensioners.
Now Harper is taking a turn and he’s hoping that some stern warnings about the financial risks of Canada’s aging population will get Canadians onside.
“Our demographics also constitute a threat to the social programs and services that Canadians cherish,” he told his Swiss audience.
Officials are staying mum on the details but it appears Canadians may have to wait longer to collect Old Age Security — worth about $6,096 a year — by boosting the eligibility age to 67 from 65.
In a bulletin distributed Friday, the government stressed there will be no changes to the benefits that seniors currently receive.
“We will ensure any changes are done with substantial notice and adjustment period and in a way that does not affect current retirees or those close to retirement, and gives others plenty of time to adjust and plan for their retirement,” the bulletin says.
But it also warns that without changes, the Old Age Security program is “unsustainable” and will become “too expensive.”
Conservative strategist Tim Powers thinks most Canadians will be sympathetic to Harper’s warnings about the impact of the country’s aging population.
“You can’t run away from the reality. I think every Canadian has a reasonable understanding of the demographic challenges that we have,” he said in an interview Friday.
“It’s just good communication strategy to pre-condition your audience to what you’re going to do and put it in the frame of the day. The global debate is about making choices.”
And now is the time to make changes, he said, whether it’s to retirement benefits or the broader cuts to government spending expected in the spring budget.
“If there was ever a climate to make change, it is now, both in the first year of his majority and also in the broader climate of the world,” he said.
But pollster John Wright cautioned that Harper’s moves on retirement benefits will upset some Canadians. He also said the agenda laid out by Harper in Davos is largely a summation of what the Conservatives have been trying to do incrementally.
If the Conservative minority government had clearly laid out this agenda before, “it may have become a bigger target before the election campaign because it would have spoken to a lot of changes all in one place,” added Wright, a senior vice-president at Ipsos Public Affairs.
“It’s a very interesting dismantling of the kind of Trudeauesque version of national vision,” Wright said, referring to a period where Ottawa’s key role in setting Canada-wide programs and objectives on social and economic issues was taken for granted.
Harper’s political opponents question why Harper didn’t raise the proposed changes during last May’s election.
“What I don’t understand is how the Prime Minister could spring this new agenda on Canadians when he chose not to discuss any of this in the last election,” Liberal interim leader Bob Rae said in an interview.
“In the election campaign, he could have talked about changing retirement dates or changing the pensions of Canadians.”
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Bruce Campion-Smith and Les Whittington
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