Hi Everybody;Here is a article that Grant has sent out to a number of papers .
Locked-In Pensions: Live Poor Die RichMarch 17, 2008
Many retirees today living with locked-in pensions are barely getting by and are increasingly becoming poorer with each round of rate hikes of their most basic needs. Some are often faced with no other choice but to give up the home they’ve worked for all their lives in order to obtain additional money just to survive.
The real costs facing seniors, especially in the current economic climate, are escalating uncontrollably due in large part to the rising price of energy to heat their homes, gasoline for their cars, water and sewer charges, endless property tax hikes and the rising costs for food.
If you are one of these people depending on your Ontario regulated LIF or LRIF pension to see you through these tough times, the money in your locked-in pension will outlive 99.9% of you.
That’s right, according to Statistics Canada, less than one half of one percent of our seniors will ever reach 90 years of age, which is the age that you would get the final 50% of the balance of the money in your locked-in pension.
Therefore, 99.9% of you with LIF’s or LRIF’s will certainly die with at least 50% of your pension money left behind to your successor all the while living out your golden years staring into your pension fund without ever getting to actually use the bulk of it.
Even at the average life expectancy of 78 for a male and 82 for a female, the government still only allows a paltry 11 to 12% annual access to your locked-in pension at those ages.
This is why you will certainly live poor and die rich when it comes to your locked-in pension.
The Ontario government, which regulates access to your locked-in pensions, is out of touch with the 6% annual access it grants seniors to their own pension money. They appear oblivious to the plight of these pensioners and provide no practical means to increase the rate of access to those with locked-in pensions to meet the ever-increasing real cost of living.
While other provinces and the Federal government allow from 50% to 100% access to their regulated locked-in pensions, the Ontario government continues to remain far behind with a one-time access of only 25%.
They continue to ignore and refuse to listen to the will of its seniors who are seeking 100% access to their locked-in pensions instead of remaining shackled with this out-dated indifferent legislation.
This is completely unacceptable and cruel to those seniors who would normally be able to afford to keep up with the rising cost of living if greater or full access to their locked-in pensions would be made available to them as was done for 61 Ontario MPP’s back in 1999 when they passed legislation that unlocked their own locked-in pensions.
The Liberal government today, continues to support the double standard that it’s current leader hypocritically and eloquently denounced back in 1999 when legislation was passed to exclusively unlock MPP’s pensions 100% while ignoring all other Ontarians with similar pensions.
Further, the Ontario government is clearly inconsistent with its own economic strategies when on one hand it allows providers of essential services to set their own pricing based on the free market model of supply and demand, and on the other hand, through discriminatory and archaic legislation, prevents it’s senior population from keeping up to these market driven rising costs by fixing a limited amount of access to their private locked-in pensions.
How can this paradox be allowed to continue when those with locked-in pensions aren’t allowed the same freedom of access to their pensions to keep up with the market’s unrestricted freedom to set pricing of goods, services, taxes and other basic necessities.
The current policies and philosophy regarding locked-in pensions were developed back in the day when the day-to-day costs of these basic necessities rarely rose at all.
Those days are long gone, but the outdated legislation governing Ontario’s locked-in pensions are not.
Tight government interference with seniors’ private locked-in pensions simply must be eliminated in order to allow these folks a fighting chance to keep up with the ever increasing real cost of living, especially when they don’t often have any other means to increase their income other than through their LIF or LRIF pensions.
The Ontario government’s insistence on limiting its seniors ability to manage these burgeoning costs with its paternalism over their own pension money is bordering on white collar elder abuse and is outright shameful.
This government is completely out of touch with its senior population and continues to ignore private members bills, lobbying by private citizens, prominent financial experts such as Jack Mintz, Malcolm Hamilton, Gordon Pape etc., petitions with thousands of signatures, CARP and the Ontario Coalition of Independent LIF Holders.
It’s time for the Ontario government to do as Saskatchewan did in 2002 and eliminate locked-in pensions altogether thereby allowing 100% access to Ontario seniors’ private pensions and thus the opportunity to keep up with the spiralling personal cost of living by managing the money in their own LIF and LRIF pensions as they see fit.
Ultimately, if the Ontario government does not abolish these archaic "out of touch" regulations and end the control over its seniors’ LIF’s and LRIF’s, 99.9% of Ontarians with locked-in pensions will surely continue to live poorly and die rich, leaving the majority of their money behind that could have been used to provide them with the quality of life they’ve earned for themselves while alive.
Grant Fleury, Ontario Coalition of Independent LIF HoldersSudbury
