Kathleen Wynne's Utter Hypocrisy On CPP

 So Wynne is trying to deflect attention away from the scandals and absolutely botched economic policies that have destroyed the province of Ontario. Wynne has announced former federal finance minister and PM Paul Martin will oversee setting up Ontario's own pension plan and breaking away from the long standing and successful Canada Pension Plan. The thing is, all Martin did was triple premiums paid by employers and employees. There was no corresponding increase in monthly benefits paid out by CPP. Prior to Martin becoming federal finance minister, CPP was and continues to be indexed to inflation.  Martin does deserve credit for addressing the future shortfall, similar to what Jim Flaherty has done with OAS.


 But here is where Wynne''s hypocrisy comes in. She tells you she is really worried about retirees being able to pay their bills.. Of course she never mentions most struggles being experienced by Ontario seniors are a result of her Liberal government, most notably electricity rates and hst on things like gas, home heating bills, etc. You see, Kathleen Wynne's, and also Dalton McGuinty's dirty little secret involves workers who have suffered permanent injuries on the job. These workers are forced into retraining programs by WSIB directed by Wynne's Liberal government. Most workers experience wage losses in the area of 50% compared to pre-injury earnings. Workers receive  something called an LMR. (labor market re-entry) pension. They take 85% of the workers pre-injury wage, deduct what they say the worker should make after retraining, which is usually far above what the worker actually ends up earning. The difference is made up through the LMR, paid by-weekly until age 65.

 For example, a co-worker at Chrysler I know used to make $80,000 a year, and suffered a serious head injury. After being retrained, that same guy now makes around $40,000 including his current wage and LMR. Decent money but still a 50% cut from pre-injury income. Now, much like CPP, the LMR amount was increased yearly at roughly the rate of inflation. Then the Liberal government under Wynne/McGuinty changed that increase to .5%. To put it in perspective, injured workers receiving LMR saw an increase of roughly $2 bi-weekly, which doesn't even cover the increase in Wynne's electricity rates.

 So I challenge anyone in the media, better yet one of the union leaders, to ask Wynne why she feels it's acceptable to give a .05 increase to injured workers, especially given her comments public service union workers such as teachers deserve 2.5%-3.5% pay increases. Better yet why it's ok for OPG execs to get multi-million dollar bonuses when there is no money for injured workers.