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“If he moves on pensions, it’s going to get nasty,” Ipsos Reid president Darrell Bricker said in an interview Friday.

Bricker said it’s clear the government has “conditioned” the public for a tough budget and that Canadians won’t be expecting tax cuts or a message of “sunshine and celebration” from Flaherty.

But it has failed to prepare the public for the political time bomb — on pension cutbacks — that seems ready to explode.

“To the extent that there is going to be a controversial and difficult part of this budget that could get the government in some real difficulty, it would be around this issue. It’s because they have not made the case.”

“It’s the one that could really blow up.”

The issue was unexpectedly catapulted to the top of the country’s political agenda in January when Harper announced in a speech in Davos, Switzerland, that the future costs of the pension system would be scaled back to keep it affordable. Without such action, he warned, the future pension system would not be sustainable.

Since then, the government has offered few details, beyond Harper confirming in an interview with Postmedia News that the government was considering increasing the eligibility age for Old Age Security (OAS), which provides benefits for people once they turn 65. The government’s plans will be revealed in the budget, and it’s expected the OAS eligibility will be increased gradually to 67.

Harper and Flaherty have pledged repeatedly that the cutbacks won’t affect today’s seniors or those approaching retirement. Flaherty even publicly suggested the cutbacks would not begin to occur until 2020 or 2025, although his officials later insisted the minister was not pinpointing when the changes would take place.