Pension Ponzi

The vast majority of Canadians are blissfully unaware that every man, woman and child in Canada now owes a $35,000 share of government debt and must pay this back, with interest! Make no mistake, this debt will change our country and affect every single Canadian in the decades to come. You may think you have planned for your retirement and are safe, but the government must find a way to recover this borrowed money, and they can only do that by raising your taxes and reducing your hard-earned benefits. How did this debt come about, and why can't we simply pay it off?

Pension Ponzi lays the blame squarely at the feet of the politicians who refused to stand up to Canada's public sector unions. The fact is Canada's public sector, which accounts for 20% of the workforce, has been grossly overpaid relative to their counterparts in the private sector with cushy pensions paid for with your taxes and new debt. There is no denying that the country does not have the financial resources to ensure that the next generation of Canadians will have the same standard of living as the ones before it-or to support our growing seniors population. Meeting our public sector pension obligations will break the current social safety net that is a pillar of the Canadian way.

Can you escape this bleak future? Can you afford to live longer? Nationally-recognized pension expert Bill Tufts and award-winning journalist Lee Fairbanks explore how this catastrophe came about and then suggest ways that government can fix what's broken, and how you as an individual can protect yourself from the financial calamity that is about to engulf Canada.

Foreword v

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: The Elephant in the Room 13

Chapter 2: The Devil is in the Details 31

Chapter 3: The Role of the Unions 47

Chapter 4: Politicians and Bureaucrats at the Trough 69

Chapter 5: Ontario Hydro: Power to the People 85

Chapter 6: Education: The New Sacred Cow 101

Chapter 7: Police Pensions 115

Chapter 8: How Much Do You Really Owe? 131

Chapter 9: A Ten-Step Plan for Pension Reform 145

Chapter 10: Steering the Titanic 157

Endnotes 177

Index 199

Bill Tufts has been helping companies with their employee pension plans for 15 years and is one of Canada's leading experts on public sector pension reform. He speaks regularly on pension matters and has consulted for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. He was a participant of the Ontario Government Round Table on Retirement Security and testified at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources. Bill is regularly interviewed by the Globe and Mail, CBC, Toronto Star, Hamilton Spectator, Montreal Gazette and the Wall Street Journal.

Lee Fairbanks began his writing career with the Globe and Mail, first achieving notoriety by exposing the source of the bullets that killed Canadian peacekeepers in Cyprus in 1974. In 1980 he received the Walter Brebner Award for Best Editorial in Ontario as Editor of the Milton Tribune, for an editorial about ethics in journalism. He is an award-winning playwright and the author of seven plays and Keep Canada Slim, a book on healthy weight loss.

HOW MUCH IS YOUR NEIGHBOUR'S RETIREMENT GOING TO COST YOU?

Once upon a time, working in the public sector in Canada meant that in exchange for a lesser salary, one would enjoy additional job security and a reasonable pension upon retirement—fair and just rewards for a life in public service. But somewhere along the way, the 20% of Canadians belonging to public sector unions managed to negotiate bulletproof job security, salaries that far outstrip anything comparable in the private sector, and incredibly generous pensions. The net effect? The way things are set up, many public sector workers will collect more income in retirement than they earned during their working careers.

And the 80% of taxpayers who don't belong to a public sector union—most of whom have no true pension at all—get the privilege of paying for it all. Nearly every one of those public sector union pension plans is underfunded to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, and taxpayers are legally on the hook to make up the difference, as well as any investment losses, until death do us part. How is that fair to anyone?

This book will open your eyes to one of the greatest legal asset re-allocations in the history of the world. Some call it pension envy, some call it pension apartheid. We call it a Pension Ponzi plan, an unsustainable funneling of money from one group of Canadians to another. Canadians are being bilked out of their hard-earned money and cheated of secure retirements in order to gold-plate the pensions of those who have engineered the system in their favour.

Pension expert Bill Tufts and journalist Lee Fairbanks investigate the history, the present situation and the future repercussions of a system out of control.