Roger Melanson says deportation offer to public service retirees final

New Brunswick — Finance Minister Roger Melanson says that the Gallant government’s latest solution to the public service retirees’ pension concerns is the fairest yet — kick’ em all out!

The concrete plan, announced Wednesday, comes on the heels of Monday’s proposal that public service retirees remain alive, but “suck it up and realize that they’re probably the last generation who will enjoy the social welfare program that is called ‘retirement.'”

In addition to forcing the “baby boomer” demographic to admit how entitled they are, the Gallant government was guaranteeing a minimum 75 percent cost-of-living increase for the next 5 years. In addition, the Liberals were committing to protecting retirees’ base funds from being reduced by more than 10 percent over the next 20 years.

“Financially speaking,” said Melanson, “New Brunswick is screwed. We’re on the road to being Canada’s first province to declare bankruptcy, probably in the next 5 to 10 years. The budget was brutal. At every level, every New Brunswicker is taking a cut. We thought our offer to public service retirees was more than fair, way fairer than what we’re doing to the education sector. I mean, New Brunswick scores dead last in almost every academic area and the functional illiteracy rate is somewhere in the 60-percent range. Our pensioners make a great contribution to that statistic, so we felt it’s time they pay up, but they don’t want to.”

Retirees around the province unanimously rejected the new shared-risk model rules proposed in the 2015 budget. Their discontent was mostly expressed through a medium they call “letters to the editor” appearing in “newspapers” (periodical publications, printed on paper, containing news, human-interest articles and copious amounts of advertising).

Of course, getting senior citizens angry is “like shooting fish in a barrel,” or so says Ari Kaplan, lawyer for the Pension Coalition of New Brunswick. “My clients, they get upset over everything, literally everything. The truth is — and you and I know this — the up-and-coming crowd would give anything for the chance to ‘work as hard’ as they did: to not be crippled by student loan debt, to be eligible for mortgages, to have unionized jobs with benefits and a pension plan! Kids nowadays would sacrifice their very iPhones for those opportunities. But you can’t tell retirees that. They deeply, honestly, believe that all young people are lazy and just need to work harder, then all of our economic woes would be magically fixed. You can’t tell our seniors any different, they won’t accept the fact that they, in part, created these problems due to their greed and indulgence.”

Roger Melanson said that it was this refusal to acknowledge their privilege that led to the Gallant government’s call for all public service retirees over the age of 75 to be deported, effective immediately. Melanson did not comment on how the mass exodus would be carried out, but was clear that this was the “end of the line” for those elderly moochers, and that they had to “leave now by their own terms, or else.”

“Mark my words — those old farts, they will be gone,” said Melanson. “We want everyone to know that in New Brunswick, when you reach 75, you will receive a one-way courtesy ticket to Nova Scotia, or wherever, we really don’t care. We’re not monsters. No one wants to evict 65-year-olds. You’re welcome to revel in your retirement for 10 whole years before we’ll deem you an unacceptable, useless burden. At that time, the cost of relocation will be the responsibility of the senior, if they can afford it after the massive tax increases we’re putting on pretty much everyone. If they can’t, their next of kin will foot the bill.”