You're right - thank you for pointing that out. My numbers are a bit skewed because I was doing it from memory and I'm old and a bit forgetful, and I didn't go looking it up at 1 AM but I knew they were high to the point of being ludicrous, and I thought I remembered that number. I was wrong but not wrong on the concept and remember that these numbers are tax free (I believe) so in effect they're much higher than they seem, unless I'm remembering that wrong too but either way the politicians and pensions are characterized by the writer in your article as 'having their snouts in the trough'. That part is right.
It talks about them having their snouts in the trough because they don't contribute reasonable amounts to their retirement funds, not because their pensions are unreasonable. Given what most of them could be making in the private sector, the amounts of money that they're dealing with, and the responsibility involved, I would say that the actual amounts might be a tad low.
I am aware of why they did it. I was in contact with a recruiter who specialized in the brain drain phenomena that Jean Chretien said didn't exist at the time. I'm not happy about it either and paid well over 50k in income taxes alone last year. In addition to the horrible transgressions by the students to which you refer the local vocational colleges and technical colleges started offering courses for huge amounts of tuition that were lead by ex-data entry clerks in some cases. Their bursary department was right there to help the 18 year old high school drop outs with the complex paperwork to incur the debt, and the Ontario Ministry of Colleges was right there to offer an accredited diploma too. That still goes on today - a college that charges 10k for a 1 year course to provide a Linux certificate that costs $300 to acquire on your own online; and I'm sure of these numbers.
The point here is that instead of fixing the broken system by re-engineering the solution to achieve the original intent, they threw a half hearted band-aid at it which is still costing us to this day, still going on to this day and all that was achieved is a further circumvention of our rights and freedoms. All I'm advocating is that politicians use some of the money they squander, like the $700,000+ spent on the G20 party to hire people with the skills to come up with better designs in the first place to scratch itches before they approve a broken system, and then create another broken system to try to fix it, all the while willing to play the curtail your freedoms because we're above the law card at the drop of a hat, to make 'anything' work.
You're talking about CE courses, not regular curriculum. CE is always more expensive. When it comes to regular curriculum something between 60 and 75%, of real costs, are covered by the government. That means the rest of us.
The problem became serious enough, to require a radical solution. It also, as OpenGambit states, not a blanket and irrevocable situation.
You won't find me arguing that government doesn't squander money. Three recent incidents involving 3 different levels of government, come immediately to mind; $1B on G20, $1B on eHealth, a projected $500K on Gary Webster's severance. Those screw-ups don't imply that the system is broken, elsewhere.
I can't believe the conservatives gained a majority either. But about circumventing the courts and denying freedoms to solve issues, some things are not so easily re-acquired. Freedoms that were gained and protected which now are so easily discarded for various reasons might be a hard habit to break down the road if the government gets used to this heavy handed liberty. Many times they have promised something the people wanted as a central platform only to discard it in the end. They were still in power and there wasn't much we can do about it. Farmers encircle Queens Park with tractors and combines, truckers congest highways in protest but the amount of change that is affected is negligible. The governments of Canada and the US have destroyed the entire manufacturing industry in north america so to say they have been the visionarys of our day would be incorrect too. It's up to us to police them and not the other way around but we have to step up and expend energy to do this.
The internet bill is wrong; it tries to fix an issue with another broken solution and a major circumvention of our freedom. That's the real point here and sorry if my inept post took us off point but I was trying to convey something important that I believe in - and still do.
I would argue that industry, in North America, is largely responsible for its own downfall. As are we, with our constant cries of, "More! CHEAPER!!"
Any time that you see some bill with a name that screams, "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!" you know it's probably a bad thing. This bill is no different. Fortunately we still have the courts, standing between us and the legislators.
