Opposition urges
strategic fiscal boost for Public Sector Pensioners
Yvonne Jones,
Opposition Leader and MHA for the District of Cartwright-L’Anse au Clair,
says public sector pensioners living below the poverty line in this province
not only deserve support from government, but it would boost government’s
own poverty reduction efforts.
Jones raised the
issue in the House of Assembly and urged government to respond to the
proposals put forward by the Public Service Pensioners that would address
two major aspects of their outstanding pension problems.
“Public Sector
Pensioners have asked government to consider a proposal that would see
pension increases for pensioners living below a certain income level to help
offset the escalated cost of living,” says Jones. “I would think that a
government who has expressed so much interest in reducing poverty would see
this as an opportunity to achieve their goals of reducing poverty in the
province.”
The second
recommendation put forward by the Public Sector Pensioners Alliance is the
issue of a claw back, whereby government reduces the amount of pension
benefits they pay out to these seniors once they start receiving their
Canada Pension entitlements. “These are seniors who have endured years of
living on a reduced income and government penalizes them more once they are
entitled to benefits enjoyed by millions of Canadians.
“Public Sector
Pensioners have been fighting for over 20 years for an indexing of their
pensions. It is time that government provide them with some level of
fairness and justice by accepting these two important proposals. Doing so
would not only acknowledge and respond to the plight of these deserving
seniors, but would be another way for government to deliver in a real way on
its poverty reduction strategy. Further, there never has been a better time
than now, being a have province, to address this injustice for retired
public servants.”
