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TOP STORY
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s parliamentary pension – cited by some critics as the main reason he has continued to prop up the Trudeau government – officially becomes vested on Tuesday.
Singh was first elected to the House of Commons in a by-election on Feb. 25, 2019. As such, Tuesday marks his sixth year as a member of Parliament, thus making him eligible for the body’s so-called “gold-plated” pension.
As early as Singh’s 55th birthday, on Jan., 2034, he will be eligible to begin collecting a retirement allowance of about $60,000 per year. Assuming that Singh lives to 90 years old, this works out to a lifetime pension payout of about $2.3 million.
Retirement allowances under the parliamentary pension plan are calculated based on an MP’s highest salary while in Parliament, and also on their accumulated years of service. Assuming Singh doesn’t win his seat in the next general election, his $60,000 is nowhere near the top payout offered under the program. If Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre were to resign tomorrow, for instance, his salary as Leader of the Opposition and his 21 years in the House of Commons would put him in line for about $200,000 per year starting at age 55.
Starting last summer, the Conservative Party began officially accusing Singh of propping up the Trudeau government in a cynical bid to secure his parliamentary pension.
A web ad debuted in July referred to the NDP leader as “Sellout Singh,” and carried the tagline, “He gets his pension, you pay the price.”
Conservative MPs also started making the charge a regular component of their public statements. “Time after time, Sellout Jagmeet Singh has demonstrated that he puts protecting his gold-plated pension ahead of Canadian workers,” reads a typical example, a December press release put out by Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman.
The accusation was also picked up by Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who said in September that Singh would never help trigger an early election before his pension vested.
“There’s nothing more important to these greedy politicians than collecting a pension.… I’ll stand up here and apologize to all the greedy politicians if he calls the election early,” he said.
Singh has long denied the charge, saying in September that “it’s another tired old lie that (Conservative Leader) Pierre Poilievre likes to say.”
One point against the accusation is that Singh didn’t have all that much trouble earning money prior to entering politics. Singh worked as a criminal defence attorney, and his notable penchant for luxury items seems to indicate that his income was well in excess of $60,000 per year.
There are also any number of other reasons why his party would repeatedly vote to prop up the Trudeau government.
For one, the Trudeau government has proved to be among the most left-leaning federal governments in Canadian history, more in line with NDP policy than almost any prior Liberal government. The NDP also doesn’t have enough money to contest an election; the party’s most recent financial statements showed them with just $300,000 in cash.
Any talk of Singh staving off an election purely to protect his pension eligibility would be moot if the NDP leader was likely to win re-election in his Vancouver-area riding. But the riding is not an NDP safe seat by any means, and since September poll projections have occasionally shown Singh as likely to lose to a Conservative challenger.
IN OTHER NEWS
After Liberal leadership candidate Ruby Dhalla was disqualified on Friday for alleged financial irregularities, Dhalla accused the Liberal Party of “false and fabricated” accusations designed to prevent her from criticizing Mark Carney in open debate. Liberal-aligned strategists appearing on CBC panels have not tremendously helped debunk Dhalla’s case that she was pushed out for political expediency. “I certainly hope the party finds a legitimate reason to disqualify her candidacy before the debates,” Stevie O’Brien, a veteran Liberal staffer and legal counsel, told Power & Politics shortly before Dhalla’s disqualification.
It’s extremely rare that Alberta and Quebec have anything in common politically, so it’s notable that both provinces have come out in support of tougher sentencing for criminal offenders. “In Québec, we believe that the sentences handed down must reflect the seriousness of the offences. The victims of these heinous crimes must live with the consequences for the rest of their lives,” wrote Quebec’s Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette in a recent op-ed for the National Post. This accords with a recent call by the Government of Alberta for Ottawa to reintroduce mandatory minimum sentencing for drug traffickers.
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