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Experts advise this requires a retirement income of one half to two thirds of earnings. According to a study by economists Kevin Milligan and Tammy Schirle, virtually every Canadian household in the bottom two fifths of the income scale meets or exceeds the 50 per cent threshold. At higher incomes, it is true, you find greater numbers with inadequate savings, particularly where neither spouse has a workplace pension: overall, these account for about one in six households.

And that’s only if you ignore the increasing amounts of savings held outside RRSP-type instruments, or in the equity in people’s houses. So it’s not clear there’s any need to force even these individuals to save more, let alone forcing everyone to, even assuming one could: many will simply save less through their RRSPs to make up for the income the government takes from them.

And that, remember, is what’s involved here. The Wynne government likes to make it sound like a gift they are giving Ontarians. But the money workers will receive, eventually, is only money the government takes from them, now: it’s a forced savings plan, not a redistribution scheme. Which might be tolerable, if the government had a halfway sensible plan to invest it. There are disturbing signs it does not.

While the plan is often said to be based on the CPP — indeed, it is touted as a substitute for expanding the CPP — the government has often cited the Quebec Pension Plan approvingly. The CPP’s runaway costs, wildly inflated salaries and exploding payroll are themselves a source of concern, but it is at least notionally focused on maximizing returns to pensioners (even if it underperforms the market as often as not). But the QPP is something else again: through the Caisse de Dépot et Placement du Québec, it is mandated to use pensioners’ savings to support Quebec’s “economic development,” meaning whatever schemes come into politicians’ heads.

So when we read in Ontario budget documents that the plan, starting in 2017, will provide “new pools of capital for Ontario-based project such as building roads, bridges and new transit,” we may be excused for feeling the government has something other than pensioners’ best interests in mind. And to the extent that Ontarians realize this, they will be less inclined to see it as a savings plan, and more as a tax grab by another name. But by then it will be too late.

National Post