The vote, easily carried by Mr. Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) majority, means an early vote on Bill C-25, the Pooled Registered Pension Plans Act, would allow employees and self-employed people to pool contributions and set up their own pension plans outside private-sector employer plans and the Canada Pension Plan.
After the vote in the House on Tuesday, Liberal MP Mark Eyking (Sydney-Victoria, N.S.) said there is little doubt the move over the private pension bill— which the government lined up at the last minute pushing aside a long-awaited final debate on legislation dismantling the federal gun registry—is a “smoke screen” to divert attention from a storm of reaction as the future of Old Age Security came into question.
“They’re trying to make it look like they’re doing something for the pensions, it’s all smoke and mirrors,” Mr. Eyking told The Hill Times after the vote. “I think they’re in real trouble over what he said in Davos, as Bob Rae says, ‘From the perch of the Alpines, he says he’s going to pickpocket the seniors.’”
Mr. Eyking said he saw Conservative MPs who were unsettled on Monday as Interim Liberal Leader Mr. Rae (Toronto Centre, Ont.) took on Mr. Harper over his pension comments. Though Prime Minister Harper did not mention Old Age Security specifically in a speech in Davos, Switzerland, he promised transformative changes to Canada’s public pension system and his aides told reporters that was where his comments were directed, and stories later circulated Mr. Harper might also be thinking of raising the CPP-retirement qualification to age 67 from 65.
Mr. Harper has promised existing recipients will continue to receive the same level of both pensions, with OAS coming directly out of the government’s general revenues and CPP from managed investment funds, but said in the Commons the government wants to ensure CPP companion benefits remain sustainable in the future.
“At the end of the day, they’ve got to get off this channel, there’s a lot of backbench Conservatives over there who were very nervous when Bob Rae was speaking about it in the House yesterday,” Mr. Eyking said.
Treasury Board President Tony Clement (Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont.) declined to comment on the government decision to put off debate on Bill C-19, the gun registry bill, until next week in favour of the pension legislation, which the government had not moved forward in the Commons since its first reading on Nov. 17, 2011.
“The House leader and the Prime Minister, I’m sure, discuss those things, it’s not really my purview,” Mr. Clement told The Hill Times after the vote.
“All I can tell you is I think it’s perfectly appropriate on the first week back to be talking about issues revolving around job creation, and economic certainty and protecting our incomes and wealth creation, that’s a perfectly justifiable topic to spend public time on,” he said.
Original Article
Source: Hill Times
Author: TIM NAUMETZ
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