26,000 small businesses petition against public sector pensions
On February 13th, on behalf of small businesses across the nation, CFIB delivered 26,000 signed petitions to MPs in Ottawa. These Action Alerts call for fairness in Canada's public sector pension system.
Canada's public sector retirement system is in terrible shape and will likely get worse. Estimates of the size of the main federal public sector pension liability range from $150 to $230 billion. This does not include pensions for MPs, judges, Canada Post or other Crown Corporations.
In Ottawa, civil servants have access to one of the best pension plans in the country, but contribute just over one-third of the pension's costs with taxpayers picking up the rest. In addition, civil servants can retire on a full pension at a much younger age than taxpayers.
Action is needed now to fix this problem.
Our members are not calling on governments to remove any pension benefits that have already been earned by retirees or active civil servants, but we are asking government to ensure all of its employees pay half of their pensions and become eligible to retire at the same age as the taxpayers who pay their salaries.
[video] We urge government to fix public sector pensions before considering any changes to retirement programs for taxpayers. To ask taxpayers to wait until 67 to collect Old Age Security (OAS) while government employees can retire at 55 is just not right. Governments need to address political and civil service pension schemes before any changes to OAS or CPP/QPP are contemplated.
