Lethbridge residents want to keep their CPP
By Lethbridge Herald on April 27, 2024.
AT THE LEGISLATURE
Shannon Phillips – NDP MLA for Lethbridge West
In May I will celebrate nine years since my first election as the MLA for Lethbridge-West.
This work has been an honour like no other. I have met so many Lethbridgeans and feel like I have watched your children grow and your flower gardens flourish over the years of knocking on your doors.
I am thankful every day for the trust you have placed in me to voice your concerns.
I have spoken to thousands of you over the years and while there are a lot of things that divide us as a province, I can tell you that there are a few things that we all agree on and one of them is pensions.
The inbox in my office has almost 4,000 emails about protecting CPP. No other issue has garnered that kind of agreement.
In fact, my staff can only recall that Daylight Savings time has garnered more email responses, but that issue was evenly split between those who love it and those who hate it. Not so with the CPP emails: the support is unanimous.
The Canada Pension Plan is widely supported and for good reason. As you know, every employee, from their first jobs, contributes to the CPP and their employers match the contribution. But did you know only about 20 per cent of the pension plan funds come from the contributions?
Almost 80% of the fund is a result of investments of that money and the return on those investments. Canadians have a strong pension plan fund because we have had excellent management of the investments.
Key to the CPP’s success is that investments are managed by the CPP Investment Board, an arm’s length board created in 1997 and explicitly, since its creation, immune from political interference.
The CPP has shown the best rate of return of any national pension plan in the world with a 10-year annualized rate of return (2013-2022) of 10.9 per cent.
Along with being a leading global pension fund, the CPP keeps a particular focus on investing in North America, thus helping businesses succeed at home too. The fund is currently worth over $590 Billion and is secure for generations of pensioners.
So when Danielle Smith and the UCP government tried to pitch their idea of an Alberta Pension Plan (APP) to pull Albertans’ retirement security from the CPP many people asked why.
Well, the simplest answer is that the UCP would like to politically interfere in the investments made by an APP in a way that no government is allowed to do with the CPP.
They want to decide what failing industry should be bailed out by your pension security. I can tell you that Albertans can see through the UCP façade. They do not trust this government with their pension funds and they do not like the idea that a government, any government, should be making political decisions about investments.
The UCP have promised all sorts of benefits from having an APP that are fanciful, at best.
But they have really undermined Albertans’ trust by claiming an APP would be able to have more than half the assets of the CPP. Albertans know when something sounds too good to be true and they can tell this APP idea is a bad one.
My inbox is filled with emails about protecting the CPP, but you don’t have to believe me.
Public opinion polls have consistently shown huge disapproval numbers for an APP and overwhelming support for staying in the CPP.
In fact, support for the CPP is not even partisan: supporters of the UCP have overwhelmingly rejected the idea of an APP in every opinion poll.
Politicians as diverse as the leader of the Conservative Party to every provincial premier have spoken out against the UCP plan to create an APP. There is no support for an APP outside the Premiers’ office!
The effort to communicate Albertans’ disdain for leaving the CPP has been widespread. Our NDP caucus held numerous townhalls across the province where we heard from all kinds of people about how much they wanted to protect their CPP retirement.
Groups organized across the province to speak out and to inform people about the risks of leaving the CPP. Emails, calls, and visits to MLAs came from people in every corner of the province and of every partisan background.
In the Legislature one day I asked, only half-jokingly, what it would take to get the message through to the UCP elites that nobody wanted an APP.
I asked the Minister of Finance if we needed to hire a plane to do skywriting or have a lawn sign campaign.
Well, my skywriting plan went up in smoke, but the lawn signs idea took off. So, yesterday in Lethbridge, we launched a cross-province lawn sign campaign to Protect Our CPP.
People can now order a sign for their yard or window that makes it clear to the UCP that we have no interest in leaving the CPP and have no trust in a provincial plan that would have future governments make investment decisions.
If you would like one of the signs you can order one from albertasfuture.ca/hands-off-our-cpp
Keep those emails and calls coming too. The UCP MLAs need to know that your vote depends on their support for your pension security in the CPP.
Feel free to contact me about this or any provincial concern at 403-329-4644 or by email to lethbridge.west@assembly.ab.ca
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I am a Lethbridge resident and not part of the over reaching by line. I would prefer to see a civil discussion on which one will benefit Alberta Seniors the most without the usual screeching and accusations. You know civil discussion not civil war. If it goes anywhere we can all vote in a referendum. No need for all the rhetoric from the west MLA. Save your signs. More plastic litter.
Once again Buckwheat you ignore reality given the fact that the proposed CPP referendum is as worthless as pretty much any other double-dealing bit of Daniele Smith’s consultations: the small print of the plan clearly states that she essentially can ignore the outcome. Given Smith has a feeble grasp on the principles of democracy in Canada it is little wonder the majority of Albertans fear her cash grab of their life’s work to build their pension. Smith will quickly dole the CPP funds out to her cronies in phoney investments. You have to wonder how much Preston is planning to get his hands on ?
Shannon Philips is in a conflict of interest. It’s not that she is against government-operated pension funds. It’s that she is against Alberta managing our own pension funds because the chances of the NDP ever coming into power again are between slim and NAFC.
Meanwhile, Philip’s puppet master in Ottawa, Mr. Singh, is alsoTrudeau’s puppet master. Rember how there is only one NDP for both federal and provincial divisions)
They want the pension funds to remain in Ottawa where organized labour can continue filling it’s pocket from our savings and tax dollars. Now, before you cue the tears and feigned outrage, let’s not forget what a bang up job the NDP-Liberals have been doing with our money:
Massively overtime and overbudget oil pipelines.Massive corporate subsidies to electic vehicle battery builders.Massively corrupt military defense spending for the wrong fighter jets.
Why would we think for a moment Ms. Philips should like to see our pension funds invested here in Albert? Even when Ontario and Quebec hotbeds of corporate pork-barreling and union-driven largess are the rule of the day?
How many of you have wondered why Shannon isn’t clawing for leadeship of the Alberta chapter of the Federal NDP? Well, it’s rather obvious. She has her sights set on runing for MP in the next Federal election. That’s the hope for getting her grubby paws on all that pension and tax money whichp dances like sugarplums in her head.
Suddely, the future isn’t quite so friendly as the Non Democrats would have you believe.
Agreed, it is true that the majority of Albertans, including those who have supported the UCP, wish to stay with the CPP.
Perhaps, a reminder of what conditions Alberta would have to meet to leave the CPP would serve as a wakeup call:
“1. Alberta would have to give three years notice of its plan to withdraw from the CPP as well to assume all accrued obligations and liabilities
2.Alberta would have to enact legislation that takes force within one year after the above notice is given
3.A federal regulation would have to be passed, recognizing the provincial pension plan as being comparable to the CPP.”
What would appear to be a pertinent reason for the majority opposition to leaving the CPP is the fear of a Smith/Parker UCP/TBA government having access to the pension funds and using them for their own ideological iffy purposes, that is, they cannot be trusted.
And, if it is believed that Alberta is owed 53% or $334 billion of the CPP assets, that belief would be in lala land.
Again I have to agree with biff ( getting scary), I collect CPP and OAS and want to keep doing so.
It is the best plan anyhere and Smith will only screw with it.
i have paid all the way into cpp, i collect cpp, and i want to remain with the cpp. if there are those that want an abpp, they should not have a right to force that on real canadians.
for those negging, what gives you the right to determine for others that their pension can be stolen away? it may be fine for you lot to go with an alberta plan, but not with my investment.
here are the CPP numbers.