Phony Consultation Process
The United Conservative Party (UCP) in Alberta is using public funds to carry out a thoroughly fraudulent "consultation process" based on the claim that Alberta could leave the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) taking with it 53 per cent of the Plan's assets. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) estimates that if Alberta left the CPP it would be entitled to about 16 per cent of its assets, while economists in Alberta have suggested slightly higher numbers.
The fact that the Alberta government is making claims which are pure fantasy has only confirmed that there is another aim behind the pension proposals.
Further confirming the duplicity of the UCP is its online survey which fails to even ask Albertans whether they want to leave the CPP, but instead asks whether they would like to see lower contributions or larger pensions in an Alberta Pension Plan. Significantly, it also asks participants to rank their answers as to who should manage the fund. It includes "the private sector" -- touted as most trustworthy -- in the "choices." This also raises the question of why LifeWorks, formerly Morneau Shepell -- pension manager and the largest human resources outsourcing company in Canada, which is now owned by Telus Health -- produced such an absurd report which no one can defend. To be generous, one could say that its report is extremely self-serving, as Telus Health is likely at the front of the line of private interests who want control of Alberta pension funds.
The cartel parties, legacy media, and wealthy private interests all present the issue as one of who would provide the highest return on investment. They do not even acknowledge that workers have been fighting for years for a say in how their pensions are managed and where they are invested.
Workers across Canada are taking up the issue of who decides what investments should be made with their pension funds, and that these funds should not be used for investments which harm the working class and people, contribute to wrecking public programs and services, or harm the natural environment. However, this demand for a say and control over what happens to their pension funds, and the demand that society take responsibility for providing security in retirement are not even recognized by the cartel parties, their governments or the legacy media.
Investment managers of the pension funds consider it their "fiduciary duty" to make investments with the aim of achieving maximum capitalist profit, no matter the consequences for working people and for society. This gives rise to investment decisions which are anti-worker and anti-social and harmful to the natural and social environment. Examples of workers actively opposing such decisions of pension boards include the following:
Revera, which has been one of Canada's largest operators of seniors' residences and long-term care homes, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP), a federal Crown corporation charged with investing funds for the pension plans of the federal public service, the Canadian Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Reserve Force.
The PSP has been the owner of Canada's second-largest chain of for-profit long-term care facilities. The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) called on the PSP to make Revera a public, not-for-profit company. Instead, the PSP is selling off Revera facilities to private, for-profit operators despite the overwhelming evidence that facilities operating for private profit provide substandard care compared to public and not-for-private profit facilities.
"Revera has made the decision to focus primarily on managing property/real estate and will no longer manage retirement residence operations in Canada," a notice sent to union representatives for Revera workers reads. Management of at least 80 residences is being transferred to private, for-profit companies, adding another layer of private profit at the expense of the seniors who live in these facilities.
The CPPIB and the Alberta Investment Management Corporation collaborated in the privatization of Rio de Janeiro's water system. Formerly a public utility, it was auctioned off by the previous corrupt Bolsonaro regime in Brazil. They even tried to greenwash this decision, and eagerly anticipated the further privatization of water.
This past summer, Ontario teachers actively opposed the union-busting activities of Stone Canyon Industries Holdings Inc. (SCIH) at Windsor Salt in Windsor, Ontario. Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP), one of the largest in the world, has major investments in and a seat on the board of SCIH. Presidents of the teachers unions called on their representative on the board to take an unequivocal stand against Stone Canyon's union-busting activities and disrespect for Canadian workers who provide a critical natural resource without which society could not function. The Public Sector Pension Plan Investment Board also has major investments in Stone Canyon. In August 2022, Stone Canyon which subsequently became the new owner of Windsor Salt, shut down its salt mine near Lindbergh, Alberta, laying off 47 workers.
This
is certainly not how the workers of Alberta or Canada want their
pension funds to be used. The fight between narrow private
interests
over control of pension funds is not one which safeguards the
security
of Canadians in retirement. Pension funds come from the social
wealth
that workers
produce, but do not control, just as the workers have no control
over
the direction of the economy. Working people themselves must
decide
where their pension funds should be invested on a mass
democratic
basis. As it stands, the decisions are taken by narrow private
interests and the workers are
told it is none of their business. It is this lack of control by
the
workers, who are the producers, over what is produced and how it
is
produced and distributed that is at the heart of the problem.
As it stands, the desperation of governments at different levels for investments funds to pay the rich is fueling the fighting between contending factions. How to provide narrow private interests with the infrastructure they require, especially now that the scientific and technical revolution has made much of the technology used in the previous period obsolete, can be sorted out if society puts rights by virtue of being human at the centre of its concerns.
The fight of Canada's working people against their pension funds being used to pay the most wretched private interests on planet earth must be stepped up because the security of Canadians lies not in this or that deal struck between narrow private interests, but in the fight for the rights of all.
This article was published in
Volume 53
Number 12 - December 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/Articles/M530125.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca