To the Editor,
Re: Budget benefit, impact to hit local households, March 31.
James Lunney, our Conservative MP, seems pleased with the federal government’s budget, giving facts about why Canadians earned benefits have to be slashed. He claims the reason the Old Age Security eligibility is moved to 67 is because we now only have four workers for every retiree.
When you sign free trade agreements with countries like China that use slave labour, expect our industries to relocate off-shore.
Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and with the previous Conservative governments, we have lost industries under the free trade agreements, sent profits to offshore tax shelters and allowed corporate taxation to be the lowest versus GDP in history.
Citizens are paying a larger share of running this country and getter a thinner slice of the benefits.
All of this was predicted by those of us who protested the WTO talks to further open the markets of the world.
Now Lunney is using our prediction and dire warnings as a statement of fact, but hints that it might be that we are either retiring too early, or living too long.
It’s not us, I think it’s government policies that might need some examination.
Klaus Nenn
Nanaimo
