This column was published in the Toronto Sun on February 17, 2016.

Kathleen Wynne’s philosophy behind the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP) is that government knows best. Despite her disastrous track record with the economy, she knows how to manage your money better than you do,

And now it seems that Kathleen Wynne thinks she knows better than the studies on ORPP that her own government commissioned.

Documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation through a freedom of information request reveal the results of research commissioned by the Ministry of Finance. The Ontario government hired prominent public affairs and polling company, EKOS to dig into the impact of the ORPP. EKOS research found that 54 per cent of businesses are considering a hiring freeze in response to ORPP, and two thirds of businesses would make operating cuts. Large businesses are considering cancelling existing pension plans and layoffs. Small businesses will redefine employees from full time to contract employees.

The EKOS research also found that 60 per cent of businesses expect to be hurt by ORPP.

The ORPP is being sold as a benefit to Ontarians, at a cost to taxpayers of $1.7 million in advertising. But the reality is that this mandatory plan to skim 1.9 per cent off your paycheque and to charge your employer 1.9 per cent of your salary for giving you a job, will leave many Ontario families worse off.

The government’s research should come as no surprise. Of course employment will be hurt if the government increases the costs of operating a business.

This is common sense that organizations like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce have been telling the government since ORPP was proposed.

It is also research the government has sat on for nearly a year.

Yet Kathleen Wynne has been charging ahead with the ORPP. Despite her own research, despite the province’s struggling economy, despite stating that if Trudeau were elected the ORPP would be scrapped, despite Trudeau’s pledge to make ORPP redundant by hiking Canada Pension Plan rates, and despite warnings from industry.

All of this fuels the impression that ORPP is less about retirement savings, and more about the vanity of a premier with a 31 per cent approval rating, whose fiscal performance is ranked last among sitting premiers.

There is one small glimmer of hope.

Wynne has now delayed the start date for ORPP to January 2018, one year later than originally planned.

The delay is good news, but better news would be a full cancellation of ORPP. Cancelling the plan would mean Wynne and Sousa are listening to Ontarians, and to their own research that tells them ORPP will result in job losses.

But they’re not listening. The delay is happening so that Wynne can better coordinate with the federal government and use the CPP framework for her provincial scheme. In fact, Wynne and Sousa want ORPP implementation and CPP rate hikes to happen simultaneously, and for the redundant ORPP to become a model for other provinces.

Because no matter what the research says, what the federal government says, or what employers say, Wynne and Sousa believe that they know best.