Dear Editor:
Wow! The surprise announcement about improving the Canada Pension Plan certainly created a bit of a firestorm in the business community. By all accounts, it really didn’t expect the federal and provincial governments would be able to reach an agreement on the matter.
You’d think a six-year phase-in of increased premiums starting three years from now to pay for improved retirement benefits for future retirees wouldn’t be something to get excited about. But the Canadian Federation of Independent Business direly predicted that a boost in CPP premiums (half of which is paid by workers) will place “wages, hours, and jobs in jeopardy” and will make “an already shaky economy even worse.”
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce added more doom and gloom by asserting “Employers may have to halt job creation … or delay important investments.”
But chamber chief, Perrin Beatty, gave the game away when he asserted “there’s never a right time for a payroll tax.” Translation: it’s not the timing of pension improvement that is objectionable, it’s the existence of the pension plan itself.
In other words, corporate Canada simply doesn’t want to share the wealth with those who create it.
So, what else is new?
Bill Brassington Sr., Burnaby
