I hate it when the calendar turns. It's now the year of the dragon but I keep writing "rabbit" on the dateline of my cheques.

January is such a depressing month - the weather sucks, the Christmas bills have arrived and there's no holiday to look forward to until early April. With that in mind, let's keep the misery train rolling by talking about money matters.

In the immortal words of the great English philosophical collective known as Pink Floyd:

Money, get away Get a good job with good pay

And you're OK Ah those poor, deluded, self-medicated Eurohippies. Clearly they hadn't contemplated the awesome fiscal powers of the Canadian government.

The mannequin who walks like a man, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, used the World Economic Summit in Switzerland last week as an opportunity to reveal that his government plans to make "major transformations" to the Canada's Old Age Security program.

Now I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but when a politician opts to leave the country to make a statement like that, it is rarely good news.

Sure enough, when Parliament reconvened in Ottawa this week - might as well meet seeing as how every federal politician was already in town for a giant photo-op disguised as the NHL All-Star Game - the opposition parties rightly targeted Harper's vague Swiss message.

If Harper was short on details while speaking in the shadow of the Swiss Alps, his Conservative colleagues were no less revealing in the shadow of the Peace Tower. Yes changes are coming, and soon, but they won't say anything more. Not to worry though, the Tories were quick to assure everyone that the current crop of seniors already receiving OAS benefits would not be affected.

While the Tories were tight lipped about the issue, one possibility that keeps being brought forward is raising the age of pension eligibility from age 65 to 67.

Oh good. That means once again, the feds are looking at solving a current fiscal problem by offloading the costs onto future generations of taxpayers. And as a bonus, those taxpayers will have to work longer before they can see any tangible benefits.

The root of the problem is something that has caught the federal financial wizards by surprise. Don't tell anyone, but apparently there's a reason the birth control pill was such a revolutionary development in the 60s. Turns out our parents and grandparents were a randy bunch and the population of North America exploded in the years following the Second World War. Keep this under your hats too - now all those bundles of joy are nearing retirement age at the same time, creating a massive hit to the OAS that all the sophistry Revenue Canada could muster failed to pick up on.

What are these people looking at when they make their financial forecasts - the entrails of goats? Just last year the feds spent a truckload of money on advertising to urge Canadians to fill out census forms, most of which contained a stern warning that failure to do so is a criminal offence.

So what did they do with the mountain of info they gleaned, I mean other than sell it off to market research groups?

According to a Postmedia News story, by 2030 the OAS will be paying out $108 billion per year, up from $36.5 billion in 2010. And this whopping bill is going to be offset by having Canadians work two more years before retiring? Sounds like there's going to be a shortage of goats in eastern Ontario in the coming years.

The real kicker here is the people making the decisions about the future of the pension system are themselves immune to any adverse effects of their actions. Thanks to a goldplated pension plan that is excessive by any unelected person's standards, federal MPs enjoy a retirement package that makes them immune from the niggling details of relying on the OAS for survival in their golden years.

Harper is right on one point: something has to be done to address the coming pension cash crunch. Offloading the burden onto future generations that will already be paying for a massive federal deficit is not the solution. A good place to start would be making sure those who have benefited the most from our country pay their share - including the folks in pinstriped suits on Parliament Hill.

Michael Booth can be reached at mbooth@ thenownewspaper.com

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