KITCHENER—Prime Minister Stephen Harper “smirked” and told Kathleen Wynne in a private meeting that Canadians need to save for their own retirement because‎ it’s not up to government to look after them, the Star has learned.

In a 45-minute meeting in Harper’s Centre Block office on Parliament Hill on Dec. 5‎, he apparently said his Conservative government has given people the ability to fend for themselves so there is no need to bolster the Canada Pension Plan.

Wynne, the provincial Liberal leader now campaigning in the June 12 election, said she left the meeting realizing Ontario would have to launch its own pension plan to ensure people have enough to live on in their golden years.

“It terms of why there’s a problem, he pretty much said that there were lots of tools, there were lots of ways that people could save and that people were just not saving. The people who should be saving were just not saving,” she said in an interview with the Star on Wednesday.

“It was their fault and people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and they need to just save because there’s lots of opportunities,” Wynne recalled.

“He kind of smirked at one point and sort of said: ‘Well, they have mortgages and things to pay’ as though there were a few other things on people’s minds, but he didn’t really give those credence in terms of those being the reasons that people weren’t able to pay into these voluntary schemes.”

Harper prefers people save through their individual Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs) or voluntary Pooled Registered Pension Plans (PRPPs) instead of foisting what his government has attacked as a payroll tax that will hurt business.

In an email, the prime minister’s chief spokesman Jason MacDonald strongly countered Wynne’s version of events.

“Ms. Wynne is misrepresenting the meeting; it did not transpire the way she says it did. Also, if you look at her public comments afterwards at the time she clearly felt it was productive and she said she felt optimistic,” said MacDonald, Harper’s director of communications.

“Presumably she made the comments she made today to distract from her mismanagement of the Ontario economy and the fact that she can’t run on her party’s record,” the federal Conservative wrote.

“Unlike the Ontario Liberals our government has consistently lowered taxes and made it easier for people to save. We’ll continue to work toward a balanced budget, and to implementing additional tax relief, leaving more money in Canadians’ pockets,” he continued.

“We understand the pressures on Canadian families and have implemented measures to provide tax relief, and to bring the budget back to balance. Ms. Wynne’s Ontario Liberals, on the other hand, are proposing higher pension payroll taxes and more debt,” MacDonald added.

“I assume once she turns her attention to the parties she’s actually running against in the election these are the kinds of issues they’ll be debating.”

Wynne and Harper, who have long differed over the need to enhance CPP, were each joined by two senior aides during the high-level discussion five months ago.

“What I felt in this meeting was this is really what he thinks. He has a real ideological aversion to putting this kind of support in place,” said the Liberal leader, who sees a political advantage in targeting Ottawa.

“He didn’t accept my arguments . . . that we as governments — both levels of government — have to pay and support people at the other end if they didn’t have enough to live with. He didn’t buy that at all.”

In Thursday’s Liberal budget — which triggered the election after NDP Leader Andrea Horwath joined Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak in opposition to the fiscal plan — Wynne touted the new Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, similar to the CPP.

It would have forced Ontarians who lack an employers’ pension plan to save a portion of their paycheques for their retirement. More than two-thirds of Ontarians lack such a pension, which would mean an additional $788 deduction from the annual salary of someone making $45,000

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“This is being framed by them — by (Finance Minister) Joe Oliver, by Stephen Harper, by Tim Hudak as a tax and it’s not a tax. It’s a savings tool,” said Wynne.

“Tim Hudak has taken the exactly position as Harper on this issue and I believe it’s important that people get that,” she said.

“People are struggling. They don’t feel that they have the capacity to save. What people love about CPP is that . . . their dollars leverage employers’ dollars — none of those other mechanisms actually do that — and it’s predictable.”

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