Jimbo Flaherty and the Con Pension Scam

Well even by Jimbo Flaherty's ghastly standards it was a bizarre and ugly sight. There he was late this afternoon, looking like he wanted to hide under a chair, or in his case a small stool.

Sweating profusely, talking in a hoarse whisper, and promising you don't have to worry about your pension or your Old Age Security if you're older than fifty-seven.

"This is not for tomorrow morning," Flaherty said in Oshawa, Ont., at an event with Conservative MP Colin Carrie. "This is for 2020, 2025, so that people who are middle-aged and younger today, like Colin and not me, can be assured that they will have the social programs, properly funded, fiscally responsible. They will be here for them in the future."

While at other times turning red in the face and looking like he wanted to strangle Kevin Page, the heroic Parliamentary Budget Officer, for making him look like an idiot. 

Again.

And making Stephen Harper look like a maniac.

Neither Harper or his more excitable ministers have explained why OAS and GIS suddenly are a “crisis.”

Nor have they offered a scintilla of convincing evidence for their case. Which is not surprising, perhaps, given the weight of contrary evidence in the many reports on this topic. But you’d think the PM would at least have read those reports before needlessly frightening a large part of the population.

But of course that's the whole idea eh? As I pointed out here. 

Scare seniors, and through them the whole population, to prepare us for a brutal budget. The first step of their grand plan to kill government. Which is all those right-wing extremists care about.

So why are they promising to spare the over fifty sevens? Because that's the group that overwhelmingly votes for the Cons. They've been feeling the heat.

On his return from swanning with the swells in Davos, the improbable venue where Harper first floated his soak-the-seniors idea, the PM was given an earful from his own caucus. They have been inundated with complaints from constituents fearful and angry about the prospect of either themselves or someone they love being deprived of some portion of their average modest $500 a month in OAS payments.

And they definitely don't want them to know that when they've finished killing government, and forcing the privatization of medicare, it'll be easier to find a bed at the Salvation Army than it will at any hospital.

So will those Con seniors forgive and forget, and trust the Harper gang? Oh probably.

Oh boy. Turn their La -Z--Boys and wheelchairs around until they're facing Alberta.

Give them a Bible, or a large picture of Stephen Harper.

And tell them to sing this one for Jimbo...



As for the rest of us, those who don't want to work until we drop. Or ask the Cons will they still love us when we're sixty-seven? We know better.

We know the only way to ensure old age security and dignity, for all Canadian seniors.

Is to drive the Cons from power FOREVER...