How old are you? If, like me, you’re 45 or younger, chances are you’re not really thinking about retirement. And why would you? You’re unlikely to be able to afford it. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. We do our best to save anyway – we contribute to RRSP or other investment vehicles, and if we’re lucky we work for an employer who chips into our retirement savings, usually dollar for dollar.

The idea of retiring at 55 with a pension of $53,000 a year is almost comical it’s so far-fetched. Yet that is what our members of Parliament get on average, some are entitled to less, but some are entitled to much more – Gilles Duceppe is entitled to $140K a year… And as the Canadian Taxpayers Federation explained yesterday, us taxpayers contribute $23 for each dollar MPs contribute to this fund, making it the richest pension fund on the planet. Oh! And MPs qualify for their pension after only 6 years on the job.

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, obscenely unfair. Why should people who have nowhere near that kind of retirement plan pay for such a lavish scheme? Are MPs so special that they deserve something that’s several orders or magnitude better than what the average Canadian gets? No. And it’s high time we made them give it up. And what kind of system should we demand they put in place instead? I’m so glad you asked.

Here’s my idea: Let’s increase the base salary for MPs, from the current $157K a year to, say, $200 a year, and kill the pension fund altogether. Just eliminate it. Let MPs save their money by themselves, like most of us do. With such a generous salary, they should be able to put something away fairly easily, right?

See, the system as it is now encourages MPs to stick around as long as they can – because the longer they stay in office, the bigger their pension. What’s good about that? I don’t want to encourage people to become career politicians. Politics should be something you do as a service to the nation – as a way to give something back. It shouldn’t be seen as winning the retirement lottery. It’s high time we got rid of this ridiculous scheme.