When my younger sister and I were growing up, our Greek-born American grandparents visited our home once a year. They came from the U.S. to stay during warm Canadian summer months. While visiting, my grandfather generally tolerated anything my sister and I did or said, with a few exceptions. We could never swear in front of him. We were never to call wrestling a “fixed” sport. And under no circumstances were we to criticize the U.S. president – in those years Richard Nixon – or the U.S. Vice-President (of Greek origin), Spiro Agnew.
“Let sleeping dogs lie,” my mother would warn us. By that, she meant that unless we really wanted to face my grandfather’s wrath, we should just avoid any discussion of Nixon’s near impeachment and Agnew’s resignation over tax evasion.
It occurred to me this week, as we watched the Prime Minister’s statements at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, that Stephen Harper probably never had a Greek grandfather in his life. After all, it was there, in Davos, that Mr. Harper suggested Canada’s retirement benefits for seniors might not be sustainable and that he might have to make changes to the Old Age Security (OAS) system to help reduce the deficit. And as the PM alluded to the possibility of increasing the age when seniors become eligible for pensions or the possibility of limiting seniors’ accessibility to their CPP, I figured there probably was no one there to offer that warning from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde:
“It is not good, a sleeping hound to wake.”
By all interpretations of his Davos statements, the Prime Minister seems to feel that in order to keep retirement income programs afloat, he has to keep baby boomers’ hands off their pensions for at least another two years. In other words, the Conservatives might conceivably move the age of retirement from 65 to 67 to reduce the drain on CPP cash. Critics say that could leave seniors out of pocket by about $12,192 (which normally pays someone 65+ about $6,000 per year). But the PM isn’t the only one sounding the cutbacks alarm. Even before Harper returned from Switzerland, his human resources minister, Diane Finley, said Old Age Security (OAS) is not sustainable and PC House Leader Peter Van Loan said changes would likely be phased in over the next five to 10 years. It appears the Conservatives are eyeing retirement benefits as a way to bail out the economy. I suggest they’re waking Chaucer’s dogs.
Need we remind the PM of events on Parliament Hill a quarter century ago when yet another Conservative prime minister tested these same waters. In 1985, then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney faced a similar rising deficit and considered ending the automatic indexing of old-age pensions to the inflation rate. He suggested out loud the he might limit the annual increases to seniors’ pensions to three per cent. He didn’t anticipate the outrage of Canadian pensioners. Almost overnight, seniors’ groups across the country organized their members, collected thousands of petition signatures and organized “grey power” protests on Parliament Hill. One protestor was heard to say, “Cut our benefits and it’s ‘Good-bye, Charlie Brown.’”
History tells us that the Conservative government, fearing it would alienate a significant number of Canadian voters and jeopardize its re-election in 1985, backed down and cancelled the plan. The Mulroney Conservatives learned quickly, as Chantal Hébert pointed out in the Toronto Star this week, that during elections 50+ voters turn out in greater numbers than any other age group, that (since the Mulroney years) the seniors have consistently had their voices heard, and that traditionally its older members make up a significant portion of the Conservative Party’s membership base.
“Any party that antagonizes older Canadians,” Hébert wrote, “does so at its peril.”
One would think the Prime Minister is a better student of history than his premature comments in Davos illustrate. And even if he chooses to ignore his history, Harper would be wise not to ignore such organizations as the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, a seniors’ lobby group with 300,000 members. Susan Eng, CARP’s vice-president for advocacy, spoke to CBC News this week. She complained that the Conservatives’ arithmetic doesn’t consider people.
“A lot of Canadians are very worried about their future,” she said. “They’re very unhappy that they paid into the system through their entire working careers, and now they’re going to see an important part of their safety-net eroded.”
Even if the Prime Minister genuinely believes he can reduce the nation’s deficit by increasing the age of retirement and reducing the size of their CPP take, he would be wise to consider the ire of my Greek-born grandfather defending his president and the sport of wrestling.
He should beware those sleeping dogs, the ones with the grey hair and lots of time on their hands.