You think "Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament" is rousing the public?

"nothing would galvanize even the most apathetic public servant like touching their pension"

No kidding.

Journalist Kathryn May explains why decent pensions were granted to public servants:

Secure and generous pensions were historically considered key to protecting the public service from corruption. Also, many public servants aren't as free as private sector workers to invest in the market because of potential conflicts of interest on policy issues they are working on.

Not only are public servants barred from certain investments, there are many other things they are barred from unless they take a leave of absence since such actions would constitute a conflict of interest, or violate policies they are subject to.

Furthermore, some of these people have been paying into these pensions for close to 25-30 years, planning for their retirement responsibly under a signed agreement they went into when they accepted their position.  I'd be pissed if my employer decided to welsh on that agreement after all those years.

And the pathetic reason Harper & Co. offer?  Many people in the private sector have crappy retirement plans.

So rather than put through measures to secure decent pensions for all working Canadians, they want to lower the bar for everyone - except themselves, that is.

Well...I've been saying that if the government squeezes public servants too hard, especially while kicking them in the face, serving them up as scapegoats, bashing them in committees, firing them for doing their jobs, they will start pushing back.

But union leaders say the government should be prepared for an all-out war with its employees if it tampers with their defined benefit pension plan or tries to convert it to a defined contribution plan as has happened in Britain.  

Them's fightin' woyds.

And it isn't just talk -

Canada's 18 federal unions are meeting in Ottawa for two days starting today to develop a united front against what they believe is the Harper government's gathering assault on the public service.



"When you attack people's retirement savings, you are asking for the fight of your life and I think it would be a most unwise thing for any political party to do. And if they did it to public servants, they would have to do it to the military and RCMP, and do they really want to annoy them?" said (Ron Cochrane, co-chair of the National Joint Council).

If Harper and Flaherty want to stick with that "public servants' generous pensions" line and how it's unfair considering the private sector generally doesn't have such security, they'll have trouble with this -

And the unions will be the first to pounce on MPs, judges and deputy ministers whose pensions are even richer than those of the rest of the public service.

With roughly 450,000 federal public servants, they and their families can create quite a painful pouncing.