Pension Ponzi: How Public Sector Unions are Bankrupting Canada's Health Care, Education and Your Retirement

HOW MUCH IS YOUR NEIGHBOUR'S RETIREMENT GOING TO COST YOU?

Once upon a time, working in the public sector in Canada meant that in exchange for a lesser salary, one would enjoy additional job security and a reasonable pension upon retirement—fair and just rewards for a life in public service. But somewhere along the way, the 20% of Canadians belonging to public sector unions managed to negotiate bulletproof job security, salaries that far outstrip anything comparable in the private sector, and incredibly generous pensions. The net effect? The way things are set up, many public sector workers will collect more income in retirement than they earned during their working careers.

And the 80% of taxpayers who don't belong to a public sector union—most of whom have no true pension at all—get the privilege of paying for it all. Nearly every one of those public sector union pension plans is underfunded to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, and taxpayers are legally on the hook to make up the difference, as well as any investment losses, until death do us part. How is that fair to anyone?

This book will open your eyes to one of the greatest legal asset re-allocations in the history of the world. Some call it pension envy, some call it pension apartheid. We call it a Pension Ponzi plan, an unsustainable funneling of money from one group of Canadians to another. Canadians are being bilked out of their hard-earned money and cheated of secure retirements in order to gold-plate the pensions of those who have engineered the system in their favour.

Pension expert Bill Tufts and journalist Lee Fairbanks investigate the history, the present situation and the future repercussions of a system out of control.