It’s a bold government that introduces a go-it-alone program that is expensive, apt to be deeply unpopular in some quarters and a tough sell in others, where the upside won’t be obvious for another 30 years.

But that’s what Premier Kathleen Wynne has done with the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan.

And she’s handed rookie Scarborough-Guildwood MPP Mitzie Hunter the job of implementing it. After just 10 months in public office, 43-year-old Hunter has been vaulted over other MPPs to be named Ontario’s associate finance minister, reporting to Charles Sousa.

She is responsible for setting up a retirement plan that will force three million Ontarians without company pensions to save for their retirement whether they like it or not. With launch set for Jan. 1, 2017, she has a little more than two years to pull it all together.

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“There’s a lot of work to do,” Hunter admitted in an interview in her Queen’s Park office. “We know people are not saving enough for retirement and we know that two-thirds don’t have a workplace pension. We don’t want a generation of Ontarians to retire and not have enough to sustain themselves. That’s why we’re doing this.”

The task includes setting up a mechanism to collect $3.5 billion a year through payroll deduction and make sure the money is invested prudently and at arm’s length from political interference. She has to sell the idea to wary businesses that face a new tax, since they must match their employees’ contributions.

There will be resistance from some workers who don’t want to be forced to contribute. There’s pressure from banks and insurers who are being cut out of the lucrative fees involved in managing the money.

And last but not least, she has to find a way around a chill wind blowing from Ottawa, where Kevin Sorenson, minister of state for finance, says Ontario will not get any help from him. Sorenson said in response to a query that there are plenty of voluntary ways people can save for retirement, including Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs), Tax Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs) and the recently introduced Pooled Registered Pension Plans (PRPPs).

“The Ontario Liberals’ reckless high-tax plans” are taking money out of people’s pockets, he says. “Ontario should stop dragging (its) feet and move forward with PRPPs like so many other provinces,” Sorenson adds. (A PRPP is a voluntary savings vehicle that, like a defined contribution pension, offers a fixed monthly payment in future for contributions now.)

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John Tory, a candidate for mayor of Toronto and former leader of the provincial Conservative Party, says Hunter is the right person for the job.

The two have known each other for 15 years. Hunter was one of the chairs of his 2003 campaign for mayor, and Tory later recommended her for the top job at the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance, a non-partisan coalition of civic leaders.

Tory agrees people should save more for retirement, but he’s not convinced the Ontario plan is the way to go.

“I’m troubled by the impact this will have on taxpayers, both corporately and individual contributors,” he says.

Tory says Hunter is patient, a good listener and someone who doesn’t lose her temper. He sees her biggest challenge as winning over a business community “who already feel adequately taxed.” He thinks if anybody can do this, she can.

“She’s a superstar,” Tory continues. “She has the personality and interest in public policy. She has the get-up-and-go. (At CivicAction) she was a great consensus builder. She was a good manager of people. She had the whole package. These are the skills that are going to be needed to sell the pension idea, and that’s why she was picked.”

Hunter was four when she came to Canada from Jamaica in 1975. Her aunts had immigrated and her parents believed Canada offered great opportunity. Her father started a trucking company, and the family bought a house in Pickering and later moved to Scarborough.

Her two older brothers work for Chrysler in Brampton and a younger brother played pro basketball in Europe. She is a member of the Art Gallery of Ontario and takes in the symphony, theatre and ballet when she can. She has served on dozens of volunteer boards and committees. She said she does not have a pension beyond what she has saved in RRSPs.

She studied political science at the University of Toronto and earned an MBA from the Rotman School of Management. She started a small business, worked in external relations at Bell Canada and then moved into the non-profit sphere. Hunter was a vice-president of Goodwill Industries and Chief Administrative Officer of the Toronto Community Housing Corp. before moving on to CivicAction.

She has no experience in finance or pension management, but Murray Gold, a pension and benefits lawyer with Koskie Minsky in Toronto and a member of Hunter’s advisory team, says that’s not really necessary.

“I don’t expect a minister to get into the technical details,” he says. “They need to listen and find the consensus to move the needle the right way. She’s showed herself eminently capable of that.”

Hunter sees her role as listening and “ensuring that we move forward as quickly as possible and ensuring that we get it right.

“This is the biggest enhancement to the pension system since 1965,” she says. “We have a long road ahead, but I’m confident.”

The Ontario Retirement Pension Plan broadly aims to help Ontarians match the payments they will get from the Canada Pension Plan when they retire. Contributions will be mandatory for all those without a company plan.

These people will pay 1.9 per cent of annual earnings up to a maximum income of $90,000, matched by their employer. A $90,000 earner will pay about $137 a month, while at $50,000 that drops to $79.

After 40 years in the plan, the payment will be close to the CPP payment. The maximum CPP pension is $1,068 a month this year, though the average payment is about half that.

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The Liberals are moving now because longevity is increasing and the statistics on voluntary retirement savings are dismal, federal incentives notwithstanding.

Two-thirds of working Canadians do not have a company pension and just one in three has an RRSP. Some 94 per cent of available RRSP space is unused. TFSAs were introduced in 2009 and in their sixth year, about a third of eligible Canadians have opened one. Among those who have one, two-thirds of the room inside is empty.

Jim Keohane, chief executive of the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP), says the Ontario Liberals are taking a realistic view of the problem.

“You should base public policy on how people act,” he says, “Federal policies are based on how you’d like them to act.”

HOOPP is one of the country’s largest pension plans, with assets of $51.6 billion. It is running a $10-billion surplus and represents 286,000 health-care workers.

Keohane is another of the eight industry experts, including former prime minister Paul Martin, advising Hunter. A ninth, Michael Nobrega, recently retired as CEO of the Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System (OMERS), has been given the task of overseeing the nuts and bolts of implementation.

Keohane says leaving people on their own to save and manage their retirement funds isn’t the way to go.

“If you don’t put people in forced savings, they don’t save,” he says. “It’s not that they don’t want to. There are all kinds of pressures: raising kids, paying for school, mortgages.”

He says large funds offer economies of scale that keep fees low, professionals to invest the money and the guarantee of a monthly payment no matter the economic conditions. Individuals face the stresses of rising and falling markets, making smart investment choices and have a much shorter investment horizon. The math is against them.

Gold also sees the Ontario plan as the right way to go.

“It’s a brave and important thing to do,” he says. “It’s brave because politicians tend to do things that yield them a return in the election cycle. This is something that will not help anybody in the election cycle. It’s a great thing for Ontario, but it will take decades for that to be clear.”

Everybody would like to use the Canada Pension Plan machinery to collect, administer and invest the money. It’s the cheapest and smartest way to go. But since that is done through the Department of Finance, it would need the federal government’s approval. That won’t happen unless there’s a change of government in next year’s federal election.

Gold says if Ottawa agreed to enhance the CPP, there would be no need to build a separate Ontario plan. But in the absence of that support, Ontario will go it alone.

“The ORPP will come to life,” he says. “It’s not a bluff.”

Ontario Retirement Pension Plan at a glance

Mandatory plan for those without company pensions.

Workers and employers each contribute 1.9 per cent of earnings up to a maximum annual income of $90,000.

Contributions would begin in 2017 and be phased in with larger employers first.

Pension payment would be roughly equal to an individual’s CPP pension.

Fund would collect $3.5 billion a year, invested at arm’s length.

Plan would not be transportable to other provinces, but would likely include survivor benefits.