Heritage Minister James Moore releases the earthshaking discovery that of the people who toil at the CBC, 730 earn $100,000 a year or more!
Can you believe it? Eighty-seven per cent of CBC employees do not - let me repeat, DO NOT - fall into the top five per cent of income earners in Canada.
Mind you, 100 per cent of our employees in Parliament, that would be all 412 members sitting in the House of Commons and the Senate, do - let me repeat DO - fall into the top two per cent of income earners.
Moore pulls down $233,247 a year as a cabinet minister, which includes producing reports like this one in response to disingenuous requests for information from the trained seals (a former prime minister's term, not mine) in the backbenches.
In this case, from Brent Rathgeber, a second-term Conservative MP from EdmontonSt. Albert, who, by the way, pulls down a minimum of $157,731-a-year. All 307 MPs earn this basic amount and often more in perks, add-ons, expense allowances, dining in the taxpayer-subsidized parliamentary restaurant from which taxpayers are excluded, and so on.
Rathgeber, by virtue of having been elected to his second term as MP, will qualify at age 55 - a scant eight years from now - for a parliamentary pension variously described as "goldplated," "platinum-plated," "a Cadillac," and, somewhat less enthusiastically, as "a ripoff on a massive scale."
According to the math of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, for every dollar Rathgeber, Moore and the rest of the MPs pay into their pensions, taxpayers like me, thee and the poor saps toiling in the CBC will chip in close to $23.
After the next election in 2015, six per cent of the sitting MPs will be entitled to pensions - yep, pensions - of $100,000 a year if they quit or lose their seat. This they can top up by sitting on corporate boards, taking teaching posts at universities, joining law practices, et cetera.
The MP's pension fund is required by law - guess who passed the law - to return a minimum of 10.4 per cent interest.
I am looking, as I write this, at the year-end statement from one of Canada's pre-eminent and most profitable banks regarding the return for 2011 on my paltry RRSP. It reports that my retirement fund earned a return of 0.67 per cent. Yes, that's a zero and a decimal point in front of the 67. Hey, at least I have an RRSP - only about 25 per cent of tax filers last year could afford to contribute.
All you financial wizards out there preparing to jeer that I should have invested in gold, real estate, diamonds, Canadian equity funds, futures in hog jowls, money markets or just stuffed it in a sock - please desist. At my age, I am acutely risk averse and accept the consequences.
But that's not the point. The point is that our MPs don't have to be risk averse. They, by law, get guaranteed returns more than 15 times what some of us "conservative" investors now get for pension investments from the banking system.
All of which sheds an entirely different light upon this cynical Conservative strategy for deflecting attention from its attack upon pensions for the most vulnerable, at least for those pensioners who can't get elected to Parliament, by staging a dudgeon over CBC salaries.
Can you believe it? Eighty-seven per cent of CBC employees do not - let me repeat, DO NOT - fall into the top five per cent of income earners in Canada.
Mind you, 100 per cent of our employees in Parliament, that would be all 412 members sitting in the House of Commons and the Senate, do - let me repeat DO - fall into the top two per cent of income earners.
Moore pulls down $233,247 a year as a cabinet minister, which includes producing reports like this one in response to disingenuous requests for information from the trained seals (a former prime minister's term, not mine) in the backbenches.
In this case, from Brent Rathgeber, a second-term Conservative MP from EdmontonSt. Albert, who, by the way, pulls down a minimum of $157,731-a-year. All 307 MPs earn this basic amount and often more in perks, add-ons, expense allowances, dining in the taxpayer-subsidized parliamentary restaurant from which taxpayers are excluded, and so on.
Rathgeber, by virtue of having been elected to his second term as MP, will qualify at age 55 - a scant eight years from now - for a parliamentary pension variously described as "goldplated," "platinum-plated," "a Cadillac," and, somewhat less enthusiastically, as "a ripoff on a massive scale."
According to the math of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, for every dollar Rathgeber, Moore and the rest of the MPs pay into their pensions, taxpayers like me, thee and the poor saps toiling in the CBC will chip in close to $23.
After the next election in 2015, six per cent of the sitting MPs will be entitled to pensions - yep, pensions - of $100,000 a year if they quit or lose their seat. This they can top up by sitting on corporate boards, taking teaching posts at universities, joining law practices, et cetera.
The MP's pension fund is required by law - guess who passed the law - to return a minimum of 10.4 per cent interest.
I am looking, as I write this, at the year-end statement from one of Canada's pre-eminent and most profitable banks regarding the return for 2011 on my paltry RRSP. It reports that my retirement fund earned a return of 0.67 per cent. Yes, that's a zero and a decimal point in front of the 67. Hey, at least I have an RRSP - only about 25 per cent of tax filers last year could afford to contribute.
All you financial wizards out there preparing to jeer that I should have invested in gold, real estate, diamonds, Canadian equity funds, futures in hog jowls, money markets or just stuffed it in a sock - please desist. At my age, I am acutely risk averse and accept the consequences.
But that's not the point. The point is that our MPs don't have to be risk averse. They, by law, get guaranteed returns more than 15 times what some of us "conservative" investors now get for pension investments from the banking system.
All of which sheds an entirely different light upon this cynical Conservative strategy for deflecting attention from its attack upon pensions for the most vulnerable, at least for those pensioners who can't get elected to Parliament, by staging a dudgeon over CBC salaries.
Yet while 730 CBC employees earn $100,000 or more, about 750 of the professors at the University of Ottawa, a considerably smaller enterprise than the CBC, earn more than $100,000. Perhaps the heritage minister plans an investigation there next.
Conservative MPs love to froth about public funding for the public's broadcaster, which amounts to $1.1 billion a year. For that, CBC provides news and entertainment service accessible by most Canadians, many in regions ignored by private broadcasters.
Polls suggest most of us think the likes of Rex Murphy, Rick Mercer, Hockey Night in Canada and The National are pretty good value.
On the other hand, Conservatives budgeted $1 billion to host a vanity project - the G8 and G20 summits - involving countries whose recent economic performance suggests, to quote W.A.C. Bennett, they "couldn't run a peanut stand."
About $50 million of that was siphoned off to fund "legacy" projects like gazebos in the riding of Tony Clement, the minister who now heads up the Treasury Board and who declines to report how many staff in the Prime Minister's Office earn more than $100,000 a year and who they are.
'Nuf said.
Conservative MPs love to froth about public funding for the public's broadcaster, which amounts to $1.1 billion a year. For that, CBC provides news and entertainment service accessible by most Canadians, many in regions ignored by private broadcasters.
Polls suggest most of us think the likes of Rex Murphy, Rick Mercer, Hockey Night in Canada and The National are pretty good value.
On the other hand, Conservatives budgeted $1 billion to host a vanity project - the G8 and G20 summits - involving countries whose recent economic performance suggests, to quote W.A.C. Bennett, they "couldn't run a peanut stand."
About $50 million of that was siphoned off to fund "legacy" projects like gazebos in the riding of Tony Clement, the minister who now heads up the Treasury Board and who declines to report how many staff in the Prime Minister's Office earn more than $100,000 a year and who they are.
'Nuf said.
Original Article
Source: vancouver sun
Author: Stephen Hume
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