Once apon a time when people ran for government, they left there leadership jobs in the bank, the factory, the educational institution to make a contribution to the Canadian people and help build Canada as a place to be proud of.

They would bring to the position all of the expereince and knowledge they had garnered in their lives and jobs, and those were the principle on which their pensions were to be secured. Good men and women were setting aside their careers to serve Canada

No such thing exists now. Most if not all people who run for government have never worked any where else but in a political party, as a lawyer in a firm that is highly politizied or on the very very rare occcasssion they come from the real world.

Today's politician are giving nothing up to serve they are getting a great job, with staff, and budgets. They understand and appreciate the good life and they step up to grab on to that brass ring....pensions being only one part of the goodlife.

i would be happy to pay a government mp or mpp who brought expereince and knowledge of the world, but to pay such a high price for someone whose only expereince is working inside the party system, what do you really get? a trained lobbiest.....and why would the people of canada pay for that????

Hello: OK – this is the time for the big push back on our present government. Why do they get to be paid BIG pensions and we get peanuts? And now we are being told that our pensions are in question? Here is the first of many ways to ask questions and raise some issue with your MP – Time to act! Get on the telephone – email your MP, schedule a meeting, ask for updates and answers.

Please ask as many people in your circle of friends and relatives to get on with it and start to ask questions of these trough feeders.. You will see many emails about this issue and we all need to act together as a group.

I will be telephoning all of these offices below. If we say nothing they assume that we are in agreement. Time for Baby Boomers to Rebel! Step up and speak out! You have been paying taxes for a very long time and your pension is under threat and about to be reduced or taken away. Speak out and act up!

To the three government leaders reading this – I want you to know that I have forwarded this on to 25 people so they too will become aware and awake as to what is being done to us. Twenty-five of us old boomers can grow very quickly into a bunch of very rebellious and questioning sheeple . I do request that the pension reforms spoken about by Mr. Harper will be presented to the people in an election platform.

How did your RRSPs do in 2008? If they performed anything like the CPP (lost 18%) or the TSX (lost 33%), you’d probably rather not think about it.

Do you know how the pension funds of Members of Parliament did during the 2008 recession and market melt-down? Incredibly theygrew by 10.4%.

Was this thanks to masterful investment strategy? No. In fact, MP pension funds are not invested at all. They are notional accounts that are guaranteed, by law, to grow by 10.4% a year, every year. This ‘interest’ is paid into these accounts by taxpayers.

In fact, while we once thought taxpayers were chipping in $5.80 for every $1 contributed by an MP into their pension accounts, thanks to these phony interest earnings, taxpayers are actually kicking in $23.30 for every $1 paid in by an MP.

What this means is that on average, taxpayers are putting more money into an MP’s pension account each year ($248,000) than we’re paying them in salary ($157,000 base pay) and way, way more than MPs themselves are contributing to their own pensions ($10,990 minimum).

Earlier today, the CTF held a national press conference in Ottawa to blow the whistle on these outrageous ‘interest’ payments.

We know that in order for our MPs to have the moral authority to reform the pensions of government workers, they must first reform their own pensions.

And it can’t happen soon enough.

A recent C.D. Howe Institute report pegs the unfunded liability in federal government employee pension plans at $227 billion. That’s a debt (in addition to our nearly $580 billion federal debt) of over $6,500 for every man, woman and child in Canada, just to cover the shortfalls in bureaucrat pensions.

We’re hopeful Prime Minister Harper is starting to understand this. On Monday, the Prime Minister told CBC’s Peter Mansbridge that “…it also raises the issue of pensions of Parliamentarians and that issue will have to be looked at, at the same time.”

We need to take action now and give Mr. Harper as well as our opposition leaders a push in the right direction.

Step 1: Call or e-mail Prime Minister Harper (613-992-4211 orpm@pm.gc.ca)

Step 2: Call or e-mail interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel (613-992-7550 or nycole.turmel@parl.gc.ca)

Step 3: Call or e-mail interim Liberal leader Bob Rae (613-992-5234 or bob.rae@parl.gc.ca)

I have been talking about this legalized robbery of the Canadian taxpayer for years. When are people going to wake up and realize our so-called public servants
are our Masters. We have to make fundamental changes in government to limit abuses like these outrageous pensions. I'm also sick of hearing about how hard our politicians work. They do work hard at stealing more money from our pockets. When are people going to get mad as hell and not take it anymore? Maybe never!

The Reform party awhile back was against these kinds of pension payouts? What happened Mr. Harper? You were the leader of that Reform party.

The pension I have is considered as a "cadillac pension plan". It is a defined benefit plan from a major Canadian resource company. After 30 years I receive $ 36,000 per year. At 65 it drops to $ 24,000. I worked 7 years at my previous job at a power company and received nothing for those years.

I was a muncipal councillor for 18 years. Pension from the city ZERO. Should have ran for MP.

This is as bad as the bonus payouts at wall Street and the chief executives Nortel scam. How do MP's cash their cheques in good faith.

Is there anyway that a country wide petition can be undertaken to either urge our lawmakers or make them change the current pension plan for MPs? Would not the CFA be a logical coordinator of such a petition?
I think everyone except MPs and their families would sign such a petition. It is a no brainer. It is time for Canadians to stop complaining about this situation and do something about it!

And they wonder why the younger generation have no interest in Politics. The young people aren't blind and dumb. When they see and hear things like this rip -off from the politicians,I don't even want to vote or have anything to do with these "crooks"..

They need to go one step further.
ALL Politicians should be banned from working for ANY company, entity or enterprise that benefited from changes to Labour laws, Tax laws, Employment Standards etc. while that politician was in office.
Yes, it's sickening to think that Joe Average can work for 40+ years and end up with less of a pension than some trough-sucking pig that served two terms.
This needs to change!

Everyone thought if was great when the govt MP's ripped off their employees pension plan's surplus - both the employer and employees' contribution parts of the surplus, while any independent employer would have been arrested had they done the same - so it does not surprise me that they, the MPs, are hypocrites when it come to ripping of the public for their own pension plans - only now the public is crying foul. Guess it is ok to beat up on public employees who get lumped together with MP's by the public, thank you Taxpayer.com for not doing that now.

the whole oh look over there @ how over entitiled the civil servants are don't look @ us keep your attention over there.
redirect the attention away from your grubby fingers in the cookie jar.
too bad someone kept their eyes on the mps.

Was this pension fiasco put in law by a Conservative or Liberal government?
How do we stop it? It is sad that the people we elected take advantage
and show no remorse for this rip-off of the common taxpayer.