Dear Editor,
Charles Lammam and Hugh MacIntyre assure us we don’t need a change in the CPP (“CPP expansion just not needed,” The Reminder, July 6).
They list a lot of really big numbers to support their claim. The foundational issue with the article is those numbers represent aggregate contributions or averages. Meaning they are meaningless for people who will actually need CPP to survive.
Yes, RRSP, etc. contri-butions are going up, but those contributions are made by people who are already wealthy enough to be able to afford to put money in retirement funds. The amount they can squirrel away is directly proportional to the amount of money they make.
When we talk policy, we need to be very careful how we discuss numbers. Aggregate numbers (the total number for everybody) or average numbers are deceptive and leave out people on the bottom range.
In Flin Flon, for instance, the average income is higher than the Canadian average income. One could arrive in town expecting a situation in which all the citizens of our city are doing well.
The reality is more complex. There are a lot of people who are doing very well indeed, but another statistic tells us there are more than the average number of households in poverty in Flin Flon.
Whether we are talking pension policy or response to poverty, it is always better to get behind the numbers to look at who the numbers benefit, and who the policy should benefit. It is more work, but it will also create a higher quality result.
Alex McGilvery
Flin Flon
