Dear Editor:
Regarding the hyperventilation and gas being expended over the so-called "double-dipping" of publicly funded jobs, I'd like to take a few lines here to try to educate those who clearly do not understand the reality of what is taking place here, or perhaps, like the proverbial grasshopper, have frittered their RRSP s away making bad financial decisions and are envious of those who have not.
Firstly, almost every career job these days contributes money to a pension plan as part of the employee's base compensation. Many of these contributions go right into employee RRSP s, other folks have company pension plans. In all cases, the employee has earned that money: it is theirs as part of their overall compensation, their pay for work done.
Note this well: that money is hard-earned over many years, and it is theirs to keep.
Secondly, at some point, an employee is permitted to draw on their hard-earned pension or RRSP money. Or they may choose not to. It is certainly nobody's business what anyone does with their earned pension money, or when they choose to collect it, whether they are private workers or public officials.
Thirdly, people can, and often do, work well into their 60s or 70s, earning a full salary doing what they have become masters at over their many work years, continuing to be productive members of society and justifiably earning their money and paying taxes as a result. That they may also be drawing on their previously earned pensions at the same time or not is no business of anyone, at any time. This is their money, their savings.
I have been repeatedly astounded by the ignorance of those who continue to write letters to this paper decrying this buzzword "double-dipping." These uninformed, fuzzy-thinking letter-writers seem to be operating under the misapprehension that the public is somehow being made to pay twice for a service, when in fact they are not. Any pension that a person draws is theirs to spend as they see fit: it is essentially money saved for a rainy day, and the envious "grasshoppers" that continue to chirp away claiming that money from the public purse is being misspent need to get over it and give it a rest.
Nick Bryant
North Vancouver
