Public Service to Feds: Hands Off Our Pensions

Legislating changes to public sector pensions would lead to 'open warfare' with unions, according to a not-too-subtle union president.

Rumours of the Conservative government taking on public-sector pensions this year have prompted the civil service's union to say that such a move would lead to "open warfare." John Gordon, president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, warned that if the government wants to restructure pensions by raising the age of pensionability or tying pensions to average salaries instead of a worker's top five earning years, it would not be greeted casually by the union, one of the biggest in the country. Of course, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has said that the only changes he has in store for the pensions have been approved by PSAC, although the office of Treasury Board President Tony Clement, the man in charge of the government's deficit-cutting strategy, was a little less categorical in its denial offered to iPolitics.ca's Elizabeth Thompson. Gordon said he figures conservative think-tanks are behind the effort to turn pensions into an issue, although we'll add that certain columnists might have played a part in it, too.