Article content continued

The Liberals were re-elected in 2014 partly on a promise to launch such a new pension plan, which would add to the Canada Pension Plan for people who don’t have workplace pensions. The federal Tories won’t have anything to do with it, saying the worker and employer contributions to the plan would be job-killing taxes.

Each side has found in the other a convenient punching bag, a party in power actually doing the things the other vocally opposes: Spendthrift reds bankrupting a once-great province with their risky schemes, obstructionist blues whose ideological doggedness keeps them from doing the obviously right thing.

It’s a fight the Tories started, with ministers including Oliver criticizing Premier Kathleen Wynne in the leadup to the last provincial election, but that Wynne and her cabinet have escalated relentlessly.

Federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver sent Sousa an open letter saying the Conservatives won’t change any federal laws to accommodate the provincial plan — by, say, treating contributions as tax-deductible — and the Canada Revenue Agency won’t help collect for it, as it does for numerous other provincial programs. — including provincial pension plans in Saskatchewan and Quebec.

The Ontario government would have been happy to pay for the agency’s work, as it does for other things Canada Revenue does on its behalf. It’s going to need a whole separate provincial bureaucracy instead.

“He is slapping the face of Ontarians by taking the action he’s doing today, and that is uncalled-for,” Sousa said. “The Harper government will not work with us in fighting the underground economy or ensuring that benefits are channeled to those in need. And now the Harper government won’t work with us to see that the ORPP is carried out as efficiently as possible.”

Refusing is an “unprecedented” slight, Sousa said, his junior minister specifically responsible for the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, Mitzie Hunter, at his side. They stood behind a podium with a sign hanging from it reading “Standing Up For Ontarians.” They conjured the ghost of Jim Flaherty, quoting him saying that retirement security is important and government should try to get along.

Oliver was even a jerk about how he issued the refusal, Sousa said. “I didn’t even see the letter. I had to read it in your papers,” he told reporters.

Provincial and federal governments of different parties don’t have to agree on each other’s policies, Sousa said, but they should co-operate where it makes sense.

Hunter alleged the federal refusal is part of a pattern of short-term thinking about long-term problems, including on things like environment policy. Young workers are the least likely to have workplace pensions, she pointed out.

“We will not help Trudeau & Wynne impose their dangerous scheme to take money from workers & their families, kill jobs &damage the economy,” Nepean-Carleton Conservative MP and Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre tweeted promptly.