Canada Pension Plan to spend 300M plus on new office
444 sats \ 11 comments \ @grayruby 29 Aug lol
Hilarious stuff here.
CPP Investments, which handles the immense investment portfolio (no they don't own Bitcoin) of the Canada Pension plan that Canadians pay an absolute fortune into, is moving to a new office and it will cost Canadians between 300M-430M over the next decade. CPP is not optional in Canada. If you make 100k a year in Canada as an employee you will be forced to pay over $5000/yr into the CPP. You used to be able to get around this by being self employed but they ended that a few years ago and self employed individuals now pay as well. It is even worse for employers who pay 6% into the CPP. So that 100k a year employee will cost a business $6000/yr. At the peak of my business we paid over $35,000 per year just to CPP. It's a massive grift.
The best part of this hilarious joke is they claim the move to the new office will allow them to attract the best talent to work at CPP Investments by having a modern facility close to transit. Their new office is 1km away from their old office and wait for it is a whopping 3 minutes walk closer to Union station train and transit hub than the hold office. 3 minute walk. They are suggesting they can't attract the best talent due to an extra 3 minute walk? Or maybe it has something to do with the fact the new office will have a concierge, private bistro, fitness centre and a nicer view.
Great quote here from the article: “I’d love for them to explain to the seniors who are barely getting by, or the small business owners who are paying higher payroll taxes, or the workers who see their paycheques shrinking, why their pension fund needs an expensive, shiny office building,” said Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Good friggin question.
Article here https://www.thestar.com/business/canada-pension-plan-investment-board-to-spend-estimated-300-million-plus-on-its-lavish-new/article_aa66dab4-63ab-11ef-87d1-0b24bd9c1bea.html#:~:text=The%20people%20who%20run%20the,%24300%20million%20and%20%24430%20million.
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61 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 29 Aug
You have to spend money to make money. That's finance 101.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby OP 29 Aug
OPM baby.
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50 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 30 Aug
Why does CPP need to attract the best talent? Are they competing with hedge funds for investment talent?
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby OP 30 Aug
Apparently they are pretending they are.
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50 sats \ 6 replies \ @psychosage 29 Aug
As with any MSM article, my question is, why have they chosen this particular subject for me to defend/be outraged by? What is the conversation I am not allowed to have about Canada?
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21 sats \ 5 replies \ @grayruby OP 29 Aug
The Star has become very leftist and typically I don't read their stuff but considering this is a crown corporation funded by forced taxation it is pretty fair for the public to know why they are spending hundreds of millions of the investment fund's reserves that is supposed to go to Canadian pensioners on a new office 5 minutes down the road from their current office.
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61 sats \ 4 replies \ @psychosage 30 Aug
I just know the optics like this are not good despite potential logical reasons for doing so. On one side, the logical reason is that there is something wrong with the old office and they chose a dumb narrative, ignoring the potential greater cost of not moving offices. On the other end, maybe they are scheming with a local contractor to make an overly expensive office where certain items are marked up higher to land in the pockets of decision makers. Or it could just be that tax funded news corp is salty that tax funded CPP has a bigger office and they wanted a fancy office too
I had some roommates in Canadian government and they also had some office migration drama. The reality is there are a lot of full of themselves decision makers who have a ton of blinders on due to their own arrogance and make bad decisions. It seems to be the rule and not the exception. This is true for any large org, not just government. I guess i just dont like the comparison of paying for an office vs paying out organizational overhead. Its an apples to oranges comparison that knee-jerks me into, “well that’s obviously some kind of think tank propaganda that has their own agenda and using that talking point to distract us from the real reason they dont like that office”
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21 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby OP 30 Aug
Fair on all points.
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50 sats \ 2 replies \ @psychosage 30 Aug
Sorry, I edited adding a paragraph, you’ll want to double check the “all points” part haha
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68 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby OP 30 Aug
"I guess i just dont like the comparison of paying for an office vs paying out organizational overhead"
Can you expand on what you mean here because office space is part of organizational overhead. The question lies in how much overhead is reasonable when the overhead is ultimately paid by the taxpayer, whether directly through CPP contributions or through the returns earned on their capital.
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50 sats \ 0 replies \ @psychosage 30 Aug
We are outsiders, we have no concept of how much is too much.
This might seem unrelated, but I spend a lot of money eating out even though I would save a ton by eating at home. However, I don’t have the time or ability to communicate to anyone that may be critical of this choice why it is better for me. It would take hours to give all the reasons to explain my personal situation.
So when I see an article like, “millennials spend too much on coffee” it instantly reeks of a clickbait narrative that doesn’t contribute to any meaningful solutions around the actual problem of the economic decisions behind having coffee out and how prices are skyrocketing. It’s an ego trip to finger wag an arbitrary group of people.
Maybe there are legit reasons what millennials are dumdums, maybe there are legit reasons CPP is overspending. All I know is the article is primarily intending to aggravate, not inform, which causes my guards to go up immediately
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