Today's Globe: "Life insurance industry pushes pension fix"

Below are some insightful comments posted by readers of today’s Globe article about how Canada’s cartel of life insurance companies, who successfully lobbied to kill the competition known as income trusts, are now busy lobbying against proposals by some provinces to set up a new national system

Comments:

SO what happens if say..manulife goes bankrupt?

The insurance companies want to keep us on the hook.

The image of "fox in the henhouse" comes to mind when these [life insurance] companies start suggesting "solutions".

Always suspicious when the insurance cartel says it really, really wants to help out the little people. Sure!

The only reason the insurance companies don't want a national defined contribution pension plan is because it will eat into their profits. That's it.

Yes, do lets give the pension system to a "for profit" private enterprise, ideally a foreign owned one, what with the success Alberta has had with energy deregulation, privatization is the way to go to Edhellmonton in a hand basket.

I find it interesting that the same people that virtually bankrupted many a retirement plan, and retiree, now proclaim that they have the answer, that they are the ones to trust. Have we not seen this story before, how many billions in bail-out has their arrogance cost us thru this recession? I will not be one to trust these people again, they have been exposed as the fraudsters that they are, without true knowledge of the financial system. "Give me a small amount of money, and I will give you back millions down the road" they say, Are they all from Nigeria? Sure sounds like the same scam to me. Sorry, there is no 'free lunch'. Work hard, spend wisely, live within your means, be good to each other, but to hand my hard earned money over to these bumbling fools?...I say no!

Private for-profit insurance companies that were once mutual companies now want absolute control of pensions.
If these firms were still mutual companies whose primary interest was the policyholder, I might believe they cared about people and pensions.
But they aren't mutual companies anymore. They're private outfits whose primary aim is huge earnings at any cost -- for their executives, sales staff, and shareholders.
Letting these people take larger control of Canadian pensions would be criminal -- something a lot of people will fight to prevent.

Industry need to fix their own house before telling other to. Their role is to sell normal annuities that give us the benefits from people in our cohort dying - just like pension plans.
Yet when I tried to buy one, the price they wanted was more than the price of a Gov't RealReturn Bond drawn down to the age of 95.
In other words, they were not even prepared to "break-bulk" much less give me any benefit from my cohort dying.