The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) is looking for the culprits that stymied the enhancements to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).
The CLC publicly announced that in late December 2010 the group filed two Access to Information requests to seek internal government and external lobbying materials related to the CPP and private sector pooled registered pension plans.
“Last summer, Jim Flaherty said that improving the CPP was the best way to ensure the retirement security of Canadians,” says CLC president Ken Georgetti. “But the minister has changed his mind and now favours vastly inferior private sector plans. We want to know who got to the government, and we hope this Access to Information request will provide that information.”
The group has also posted a video relating to the matter on YouTube, in which Georgetti declared the group is looking for the federal government to “live up to the commitments they made in Prince Edward Island.”
“They were going to go ahead with a two-pronged approach to retirement security, and a significant part of that was an enhancement to the Canada Pension Plan,” he says in the clip. “It seems to me that the power of the financial services industry just showed how quickly they can change the mind of a government that was persuaded by facts, to turn them around and reward these banks that actually put us into the depression we have found ourselves with regard to our economy.”
In both the release and the video, Georgetti doesn’t mince words about his feelings toward the private sector being involved with the retirement savings of Canadians.
“The banks and insurance companies want control over the retirement savings of Canadian workers, and that’s a shame because they charge obscenely high management fees for investing those savings,” he says. “That can reduce your pension nest egg by more than 50%. The CPP is a far better option.”
The CLC hasn’t been given any indication as to when it will receive an answer to the request.
The CLC represents 3.2 million Canadian workers and brings together Canada’s national and international unions, along with the provincial and territorial federations of labour and 130 district labour councils.