Pension relief or relieved of pensions? Flaherty is expert at both.

It's now two years since Flaherty blew a $35 billion hole into the retirement savings of Canadians who are not blessed with pensions. Jack Layton was the one who made that possible. Meanwhile, where is the government's proof of tax leakage? Jack Layton's? Why do pensioners get income splitting and 75% of retired Canadians do not? Why can pension funds like OMERs and Teachers' own income trusts and not pay the 31.5% tax and 75% of Canadians can not?

Who's on first? Flaherty is a charlatan crook. Jack Layton is just as bad.


Pension relief in works
Ottawa reviewing rules for company plans hit by market crisis, finance minister says

October 30, 2008
Ann Perry
Brett Popplewell]
Business Reporters
Toronto Star

The company pension plans of millions of Canadians, battered and bloodied by weeks of stock market turmoil, will likely receive some form of relief from the federal government, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty indicated yesterday.
Flaherty said the government is considering easing rules that require companies to top up plans that fall below levels required to meet pension commitments.
"We're reviewing (the rules) now in the Department of Finance with a view to seeing what can be done to help the pension funds at this particular time given the global circumstance."
He hinted that one of the options on the table may include extending the five-year time period companies have to make up shortfalls.
Pension consultants Mercer Human Resource Consulting told the Star in late September that the stock market slide to that point had sliced about $10 billion from the pension assets of the 125 major employers it tracks. Since then, things have worsened dramatically and Toronto's S&P/TSX composite index has lost 31 per cent of its value from the beginning of the year.
Industry insiders say a number of large Canadian companies began organizing recently to lobby the federal finance department to extend the window to make up shortfalls to 10 or 15 years.
The situation is most difficult for firms facing a year-end assessment of pension fund assets to determine their funding requirements. Some firms could be forced to divert cash into pension funds rather than operations, insiders say.