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The ORPP, like the CPP and QPP, isn’t a welfare program, where one group of taxpayers pays and another benefits: that’s the point of programs like Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement. It’s a contributory plan, where what you receive is in line with what you put in. The government isn’t giving you money, but taking it from you, with a promise to give it back later. It’s about income replacement — sustaining yourself after retirement in the lifestyle to which you’ve been accustomed — not income support. As such, the plan does nothing for those worst off: if you can’t afford to put away money for your retirement on your own, you are no more able to afford it because the government forces you to.

But of course, this isn’t about the worst off. It isn’t even about the population as a whole. It’s about a small sub-group of workers, perhaps one in six, most of them middle-income or better, who are held to be saving less than the recommended levels. If so, that might make the case for forcing them to save. But it’s a bit of a leap to forcing everyone — or everyone not already covered by corporate or public pension plans — to do the same. Lots of people are saving more than enough as it is, and will resent being forced to save more. And since they are saving more than enough, they may well respond by cutting back on their own private savings to make room for this unwanted incursion on their current income.

There is no generalized crisis of under-saving, then. Without it, the case for a forced saving plan looks rather weak, even on the Australian model, still less the centrally-controlled fund Ontario has in mind. Absent that case, the contributions the government hopes to extract look a lot more to the average person like a tax. And a large and unneeded new tax, provincially based one his federal opponents support is exactly the sort of thing Harper might have hoped to run against.

National Post

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