Aging Security

In his dim and distant politically active past the old man has variously supported the Conservatives (of whatever name) and the Liberals. In Canada that has really meant a choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, as our Socialists (of various names) have charged. In our parliamentary system my reason for the variety had more to do with what I considered necessary periodic changes in the ruling dictatorships than any real hope of changing the national trends and goals in our country’s practice of the art of the possible.

     Since the advent of the first of our species during and after the glacial periods, the developing body politic of this continent, including the part that became Canada, has been fractured. The arrival of the French, the English, the Scots and the Irish, not to mention the earlier Iberians and later Africans and Asians, encouraged more tribalism and division. Electoral policies since World War 2 have catered to that division in Canada's large national area to make it even more ungovernable that it was in the century before.

The old man has been known to rail against multiculturalism, against the codification of “rights and freedoms”, against multiple citizenship possibilities, against capital punishment, and against many of the equalizing policies that have created so many dependencies in Canada, Europe and even in the United States to the point that they exceed government ability to collect and pay their costs. The most nonsensical part of these policies is the universality aspect of them.

     In this piece the old man’s contrariness again rears its head because of the furor caused by Prime Minister Harper’s casual comments at the Davos economic forum in Switzerland that his government would have to take steps to change our pension system. I assume he did that deliberately from the European context to get the furor started at home early in his new majority mandate. If one listens to the talking heads on television and reports from pension recipients and the parliamentary opposition, it is apparent that Harper is now exercising his Machiavellian secret agenda to eviscerate the “poor” for the benefit of his banking and oil company friends. God knows what other secrets may be found out before he completes his four year majority.Perhaps even some of his back benchers are worried lest their overly-generous pensions after retirement or defeat should be tampered with?

     I say such an overhaul is long overdue! Take the Old Age Security Pension, which is sufficient to express my contrariness here. First let me confess in retrospect that throughout my working years I expected that by the time I retired all the contributions I made to the welfare programs in taxes and assessments would be exhausted by payments to those already retired, and no pensions would be available for me. However, when I did retire at nearly age 57 for health reasons, I took into account the various programs then still available including Old Age Security at age 65 for  both my wife (25 days younger than I am) and me. The monthly CPI indexed cheques have been hitting our bank account for 20 years since then!

     Now I know the government did not force me to apply for OAS when I reached 65, but at the time we felt sufficiently insecure to apply. And how many who are already millionaires at 65 do you know who fail to do so? It is also true that our stay-at-home life style and depression born frugality has stayed with us. We could manage for the rest of our limited presence here without that pension. Perhaps we could terminate the entitlement before we die but when we consider the consequences of opening that particular can of worms, we decide to leave it closed.

     There is absolutely no reason why the already wealthy should be entitled to the extra windfall. Though it may never be politically possible and will not be in Harper’s time, the old man has always believed such payments should be means tested, not universally awarded.

     Furthermore, extending the eligibility date from age 65 to age 67 is simply a matter of keeping up with the times. Life expectancy has increased more than 2 years since the age 65 retirement date was set. Most healthy individuals at age 65 would actually prefer to keep on working as long as they can and many do so even after applying for the pension entitlement. Others strike out in new and perhaps even more strenuous undertakings and sometimes start new businesses. Most of us would prefer to continue with an expertise in regular work environments and routines. There is no reason why we should not continue to contribute for two more years to make the funds available more viable for pensioners getting in line at 67.

     It is a fact that the universality principle has already been tampered with by establishing Old Age Security Supplements and other adjustments for the poor and some manner of clawing back the taxable OAS from the wealthy, though I have not looked into the status of that in current tax law. Why not simply use the tax returns to index the amount of the pension cheque at both ends of the spectrum, sending a larger amount to those below a certain proven income and sending none at all to those above a maximum proven income? Surely some computer whiz civil servant could design a program to simplify the tax form and accomplish that result.

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A Death in Canadian Politics

This morning when the old man switched his breakfast news dollops from the local channel to CBC Newsworld, he found himself immediately in the midst of a special Politics program revealing the sad and serious voice and visage of its host. I found out then about the death, in the early hours of this Monday morning, of John Gilbert Layton, Ph.D.
Dr. Layton was the brilliant scion of a well-to-do Anglophone Quebec family long steeped in Quebec and Canadian politics since Confederation in 1867, generally on the centre right side of the spectrum. His father, Robert Layton, was a cabinet minister in Brian Mulroney’s government. After studying political science at McGill in Montreal, he moved his young family to Toronto in 1970 when he was only 20, went to York University there for his Ph.D., took employment as a professor at Ryerson University and became a prominent activist for various causes. He became popularly known as Jack Layton, likely from the time he went to York, a place sometimes in the news in the 1960’s as the haven of hippy radicals who became professional “protesters” of that era. From activism to city politics to federal politics was his determined course. He persisted and became leader of the New Democratic Party in 2003. Through several elections he kept improving the party’s standing until he became official Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons at last spring’s election. I think he was himself surprised by his success in Quebec.
When I heard the many tributes from political friends and foes alike, I shed a few tears myself, saddened that he died so young. Like the biblical Moses he led his people to the Promised Land, briefly climbed his Mount Nebo to see it with his eyes but would not “cross over into it.”
I was not a fan of Jack Layton. He was young enough to have been my son. I never met him or even saw him in person, but I never warmed to him as I had to Tommy Douglas, though just as opposed to that prairie preacher’s politics. In spite of Jack’s stalwart appearance and smooth leadership style, my age and background led me to dislike his lifestyle and his political opportunism. Jack inevitably reminded me, both in appearance and in his youthful “activism” of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who was equally brilliant and even more politically active as a young teenager. The image posted above shows Lenin circa 1910 at the age of about 40 adjacent to Jack Layton, likely in his fifties in this picture.
I was very impressed with Layton’s letter to Canadians, composed within days of his death, which has already been declared a historic document by the CBC. Likely his followers will follow the recommendations for the NDP he outlined, but I see trouble ahead. I expect changes in his party and others happening sooner rather than later as a consequence of his departure. An earlier Liberal-Democratic union perhaps? With my usual cynicism, I felt at last spring’s election, that the NDP’s virtual sweep in Quebec, was thrust upon Layton, rather than achieved by his party’s efforts alone. I speculated (Why not? The TV pundits do it all the time!) that a group of left wing nationalist Quebecers had given up on the Bloc Quebecois and decided that the NDP would be a better way to exercise clout for Quebec in Ottawa. I expect the NDP split between the Quebecers on one hand and the rest on the other hand will become evident at next year’s proposed leadership convention if not before.
Notwithstanding my likely wrong assessment of Jack Layton and his politics, I grieve with the rest of you, over the loss of one man’s promise, and sorrow with you for his family and his friends.

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Political Games

According to the writer whose work persuaded me to join the Internet Blogosphere, successful Blogs require daily contributions. He would undoubtedly already consider The Old Man’s Post a dismal failure. As I am not trying to sell anything or earn an income, the motivation is not always there for the old man. For me, this is simply an outlet to explore the language, express opinions, reminisce, comment on what is becoming an ever stranger world, and also to create some kind of record of the way this old man fades away into his inevitable obscurity and anonymity. Although so far there has been no public reaction except from the few people I notified of the site who occasionally check it, it is worth the effort for me, just for the sake of the cerebral exercise entailed. So for now I shall continue as and when I can.

Some weeks ago I turned on the tube and surfed between Canadian and American news channels primarily because of the fuss that had been made about President Obama’s speech to American school children on the first day of school this fall. I wanted to hear the speech for myself. There is also a Canadian federal election in the offing, a phenomenon that seems almost an annual affair in the most recent four or five years. The political gamesmanship evident on both sides of the border becomes distressing to behold especially when I consider how very little real difference there is in what any of the participants in the game can accomplish. One can think of almost any of the issues politicians raise in one election after another and there is an almost equal division in the population about the direction we need to go to achieve a civil and peaceful society

In Canada that “federal election in the offing” has stayed in the offing ever since this fall’s session of the current parliament. Liberal leader Ignatieff announced before the sitting that he was ready to bring the Stephen Harper minority government down. That was immediately countered by the other two parties represented in the house announcing that Canadians did not want an election in the recession plagued country. That left Ignatieff’s first vote of no confidence effort falling far short of success. In the meantime the opposition leader’s popularity has continued to plummet and Harper continues to rule, with an unofficial election campaign, dirty tricks and all, continues to flourishing on all sides. Prime Minister Harper may yet end up with a majority government if he continues to be the wily politician, and turn out to be the Mackenzie King of our era. The country slides ever deeper into deficit and debt, and the population keeps on spending all the borrowed dollars that our sons and heirs will have to repay generations later.

All parties here and in the United States pay lip service to the serious matters of managing our physical environment by lessening the impact of our species on the pace of melting ice caps and deepening oceans. Yet all parties seem intent instead on exploiting the availability of scarce resources uncovered by the warming climate. It really does not matter whether Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats or Republicans are running things in our neighbouring countries, the consequences vary but little. On climate change, the Kyoto Accord of long years ago made participants who signed up feel righteous for such good intentions but not one country has really accomplished anything in reducing the impact of increasing industrial pollution on the rate of nature’s changing seasons. I predict no serious agreement will be reached at the approaching international meeting designed to come up with a successor to Kyoto.

In the States President Obama too is becoming a toothless tiger as ruler of the White House. No matter what his good intentions as a candidate, he is still a prisoner of the system. On domestic and economic matters he must rely on advisors he chose, all establishment figures in finance, public relations and politics, and pushed one way and another, he must opt for a decision, usually a compromise, which he must then try to sell to the body politic. As he nears the end of his first year in office, it is unlikely that anything approaching a successful health plan will take effect. Many of his economic and finance advisors are products of the banks and organizations who caused the near Depression in the first place, and as yet there is no indication that his government will come up with any way of bringing Wall Street under any reasonable control. He gets no help whatever from the loyal opposition and the way things are going, if Republicans come up with a believable leader in the mid-term elections next year, Democrats may well lose the Congress again in 2010.

In foreign affairs, Obama has made Afghanistan his war and after eight years fighting a war that seems to have no end, Obama also appears to be ruled by the advice of his military establishment, which by its very nature and existence has a vested interest in keeping all its pots boiling. Tell me, why should the United States have its armed forces stationed in some 150 countries around the world, all watching the World Series of baseball from afar as the announcers tell us during the games?

And so the game of government and politics goes on as nature moves inexorably on its way and we still know not what we do. I have copied pictures below of three of our current players in the game, being Prime Minister Harper and President Barack Obama.

The Old Man

November 1, 2009