Rushing Toward Retirement

The publishing business may have seen better days, but you have to give the folks at McClelland and Stewart credit when it comes to The Third Rail: Confronting Our Pension Failures. Their timing, after all, could not be much better, given that they are releasing the book right as Canadian politicians appear finally ready to have a meaningful conversation about how to put this country’s retirement infrastructure on sounder footing. In Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, plans are being brought forward to shore up their respective pension frameworks in advance of the arrival of the baby boom generation. As such, co-authors Jim Leech, the head of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and veteran business journalist Jacquie McNish might actually get a fair hearing.

They deserve one, too. Their book, which is structured around case studies in New Brunswick...