MacGregor should abandon private members bill on CPP
Dear Mr. MacGregor,
I am one of your constituents and have only recently been informed of your private members bill to take the administration of the Canada Pension Funds away from the CPP Investment Board. This would be a colossal mistake and ensure an eventual time when payments and benefits from the plan would become unsustainable.
Naive, puritanical ideas about disinvesting from a host of Canadian industries because of supposedly woke concepts of far-left environmentalists and left wing extremists is no way to show good stewardship of Canadian’s savings within the CPP. You, yourself, have no financial or investment background and those who do are advising against putting the CPP back onto an unsustainable footing similar to what existed prior to the 1996 reforms that set up the CPPIB. If your bill was passed the funds would become politically controlled rather than managed wisely. The worst investments have been those directed by governments and there are enumerable examples of botched ,politically motivated government investments that have been extremely wasteful.
The CPPIB controls about $456 billion and those investments are very important supports to the Canadian economy. Massive shifting out of various industries would be a major destabilizing force and would weaken our entire economy terribly resulting in Canada becoming less productive and less competitive in the global market.
You and other MPs should spend your time and efforts concentrating on improving delivery of essential government services rather than expanding your purview into areas where the bureaucracy and politicians have been pathetically weak and lacking in knowledge. The CPP is not a government slush fund, but belongs entirely to its contributors and should be managed by those who have a fiduciary responsibility to Canadians who can rely on it to be sustainable for their retirement years. Please realize that only privileged MPs such as yourself are going to receive an excessively generous guaranteed taxpayer funded pension and a majority of the rest of Canadians will need to rely on their savings within the CPP for a significant proportion of their retirement income. It’s their money not yours.
R. David Kinloch
Shawnigan Lake