Layton promises to double public-pension payouts

m, lots of money he wants to spend.

Especially other peoples'.

To me this is one of those things that is simply a no brainer.
Short of an untimely death, every single Canadian will at some point be too old to work. At that point you either have enough money saved, or you become a burden on the country. In other words, your insurance policy for saving nothing your entire life is the government will bail you out. There is nothing wrong with forcing people to pay into that insurance plan. Besides, old age benefits haven't risen much in decades and are FAR below inflation.

...now, whether we should be making our corporations dip into some of their record profits to help fund the declining years of a work force they exploited all their lives is another debate...

The problem is our population demographic is continually rising in age. A policy to pay higher CPP benefits would be funded by an ever decreasing percentage of the population in the workforce. The math just does not work. As the population ages the dollars paid out to CPP and OAS will increase beyond the rate of inflation and growth in the GDP. The coming population bulge of seniors needs to rationalized into sustainable policies.

Let's nationalize the dog and cat food industry and make sure there is a good supply on hand for our seniors at all times. Problem solved.