Dear Premier Smith. Please wake up. It’s just a dream.
I see now why you refused to campaign last spring on the creation of an Alberta pension plan; because there were precious votes and seats at stake, and you couldn’t risk losing any trying to explain the inexplicable.
In the latest out of the Dreams by Dani’s war room, you want to withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan, ostensibly for the benefit of Albertans, and create your very own.
You believe that you, that Alberta, with about 15 per cent of Canada’s population (excluding Quebec), and having made 16 per cent of all contributions is entitled to over 53 per cent of the CPP’s assets.
That’s some dreamy math right there.
Might you want a second opinion? Maybe analyze your dream with one or two other financial analysts, pension experts, economists, high school math teachers, and not rely solely on the UCP-commissioned What-Do-You-Want-The-Numbers-To-Say Lifeworks consultant firm?
There are plenty of these specialists all weighing in now, all over the country, free of charge – and it didn’t take them two years to employ a little common sense; 16 per cent does not equal 53 per cent.
You and your paid consultant have extrapolated, based on this new math, that Alberta will be flowing in cash to give bonuses to seniors, offer greater benefits, and lower employee and employer contributions.
The survey on your government’s website proclaims “Your Pension. Your Choice” and “Have Your Say”. Yet you don’t make clear that you’re referencing an Alberta pension plan, not our established, successful, and safe Canada Pension Plan – OUR Pension. OUR Choice.
The survey only asks questions that assume we want an APP: What would you like to do with all these billions? Greater benefits? Lower rates? A bit of both? How would you rate this benefit, that benefit?
There is not one single question about whether Albertans want an APP or not. You’ve skewed this survey and you’re trying to skew Albertans, and by extension, other provinces and Canadians.
You will no doubt use the results of this survey to “reinforce” your dream, and to further attempt to gaslight the electorate, claiming that a high percentage of Albertans want to see an Alberta Pension plan like this or like that or with higher benefits or with lower contributions etc. But you will be excluding the most crucial metric - whether any Albertans wants an APP at all.
Your gaslighting has already started in earnest with what must be a multi-million dollar expenditure (waste) on an advertising blitz - using Albertan’s tax dollars, to be clear.
You have made mistake after mistake and offered apology after apology in your short time in office. But mistakes cannot be afforded with this one. There is no mechanism to rejoin the CPP once left. No “Oops, sorry. Can I have a do-over?”.
After answering all those skewed survey questions, it closes with “Any Final Thoughts”.
Well here are a couple, Premier: If you need to continue to Ottawa-bash to prove your mettle to Albertans, stop using the CPP/APP issue. Keep with the Energy Industry file – there’s plenty of fuel there.
And instead of rolling around giddily in hundreds of billions of Dani-dollars at your slumber-party, just go back to sleep. Perhaps you’ll wake up, smell the coffee, and have a few sips before making policy and legislation and dreamy plans for your sovereign little Dani-land.
Leave our CPP alone. Your dreams cannot not become our nightmare.
Jim Carroll,
Innisfail
