By Adam Mayers, includes “Canadians who don’t have a pension often cast an envious eye at their friends and family who work in the public sector, maybe as nurses and hospital technicians, teachers, firefighters, police or municipal workers.  This is because 76 per cent of private sector workers don’t have a pension of any kind. But 86 per cent of public sector employees do. Most public sector pensions are the best kind — defined benefit plans paying a monthly amount for life. Many are adjusted for rising inflation.  If you were one of the have-nots, a diligent saver socking away all you could in a Registered Retirement Savings Plan, the 2008-09 stock market crash made you worth up to 40 per cent at the bottom. Markets have recovered — the current plunge notwithstanding — but even so, public sector pension envy has been on the rise. Safe. Secure. Indexed. A recent Toronto conference on pension reform sponsored by Canada’s Public Policy Forum, took a closer look at the divide. Critics say public sector plans are unaffordable and unfair, and should be wound up. But would it really be cheaper and fairer to do so? Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said this spring that public pension plans threaten the financial health of U.S. cities and states. He said everyone has underappreciated “the gigantic financial tapeworm” created when the pension promises were made. …”

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