Pension Poop

WOW! I just read a story on Yahoo about an independent study done by a Toronto think tank on how Canada's Member of Parliament pension fund could possibly be at a deficit level of $1 Billion. The study cites figures given by the federal government describing how much is currently in that fund and claims it did the math on how much will actually be needed by the time the MPs, who are now in office, retire. The difference in those amounts is staggering, apparently. IF you can believe them.
The study concluded that one way to appease what may be irate pensioned elected officials, would be to give a major pay hike to them now, so they can put aside that money for the future against the so-called, bankrupted pension fund.
Du uh...
I wonder if the same folks who were in charge of this slick report were apprised of the fact that the federal civil servant pension fund has been pilfered by the feds for many years now and may well be rather extinct within just a few short years? I don't see anybody grieving that process or suggesting these people be given ridiculously high raises in pay to compensate for it.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
There have been at least two crown corporations that have been privatized, in an attempt to make for better administration and less waste of tax dollars. CRA, in particular, has come under the close scrutiny of the Treasury Department and has seen both a huge cut in union influence and what used to be reasonable pay hikes, to allow for cost of living rises. And, so far at least, most of the raises that are granted, come retroactively, when contracts have run out and negotiations run for months, sometimes years after. Add to that, once retroactive raises have been given, they sure haven`t included interest for the months when the recipients were without a contract.
Specifially, CRA's IT section has had pay raises reduced considerably. Most of the full time employees in that department simply are no longer even being paid market salaries for their programming skills and experience. And that was not always the case.
So when you marry that with the fact that their pension fund is in dire trouble, you get a group of very underpaid and underappreciated employees. Powerless employees, I might add.
Employees who see to it that our country's bureacracy runs smoothely in this era of sophisticated technology. Funny - I don't see any think tank doing an independent study on behalf of them.
While I realize this involves a completely different department, it does make me wonder why all those thousands of potential E.I. recipients are experiencing such frustratingly slow return times on their applications for benefits.
Guess that's what happens when we elect lawyers to run our country.