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Robert Rollback on PEI Pension Reform

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Joe Ghiz and Catherine Callbeck - First Female Premier Catherine Callbeck Never Set Out To Be A Trailblazer (CP Photo)

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Joe Ghiz and Catherine Callbeck – First Female Premier Catherine Callbeck Never Set Out To Be A Trailblazer (CP Photo)

“The PEI government says it will introduce a number of reforms to its public sector pension plans when the legislature resumes next month, including scrapping guaranteed cost-of-living increases.” Globe and Mail. NJN received this comment from a reader.

Robert Rollback – or a broadside in verse on pensions

By Brandon M.

Once upon a time Prince Edward Island voted red

We looked toward Ms. Callbeck

‘Be premier,’ we said

The first province in Canada to give a woman the lead

We trusted her to know us, what we want and what we’d need

Callbeck looked at the numbers and didn’t like what they might spell

‘$100 million deficits will destroy this province, and this party will go to hell’

Premier Callbeck decided right then and right there

She’d cut public sector wages, what is necessary must be called ‘fair’

 

The people were angry as anyone could see

Which did away with Callbeck, as government went PC

When the Tories were done and Liberals returned

The deficits came with them, as Islanders then learned

 

Deficits grew as the patronage splurged and spilled

Not a single Liberal elite had pockets that were unfilled

Debts upon debts with Peter robbing Paul

Ghiz couldn’t solve the money problems, or very much, at all

 

PEI Premier Robert Ghiz, thinking about big changes to public sector pensions  (PETER POWER/THE GLOBE AND MAIL)

PEI Premier Robert Ghiz, thinking about big changes to public sector pensions
(PETER POWER/THE GLOBE AND MAIL)

$100 million deficits, as predicted, became the norm

Liberals brought our finances into a perilous, addictive storm

Troubled once again to plug the holes in their strainer

They returned to their old habits without time to think

They’d pull the plug on pensions from the bottom of the sink

 

The prophecy from Callbeck seems to have come true

So after the Robert Rollback, we’ll fix it with team blue

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