As Ontario pushes ahead with pension reform to improve retirement security for its citizens, it should consider a “middle-way” solution between current competing visions for reform, according to a report released today by the C.D. Howe institute. In “Helping Ontarians Save for Retirement:...

Despite having been available for decades, target benefit pension plans (TBPs) will continue to be resisted by federally regulated employers unless a legal flaw is fixed, according to a report from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Target Benefit Plans: Improving Access for Federally Regulated...

Ottawa should move to reform seniors' benefits in the upcoming budget by letting recipients choose richer payments, later, from the Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement programs if they wish. In the report, the author says letting OAS and GIS recipients delay take-up and rewarding...

The Canadian federal government’s Bill C-25 provides for a new type of tax sheltered savings plan for Canadians called a pooled registered pension plan (PRPP). In its current form, however, the design blueprint falls short of its primary objective: to ensure that the majority of Canadians who...

Canadian public-sector pension plans typically do not use market yields to calculate their liabilities: if they did, Ottawa’s unfunded pension liability would stand at $227 billion – some $80 billion larger than reported in the Public Accounts. The value of the typical federal employee’s...

Canada’s graduated personal income tax leads most taxpayers to expect higher tax rates when they are working than when they are living on lower incomes from their retirement savings. Yet for many people, marginal effective tax rates on income from retirement savings are higher than those they...

As Canada’s babyboom generation approaches retirement age, public concern about the adequacy of retirement income is mounting, note the authors. Most of the public debate has been about potential reform of the tax and fiduciary rules governing corporate pension plans, the possibility of...

Many retirees face dramatic erosion of their savings due to outdated government rules, says a new C.D. Howe Institute report. In “Outliving Our Savings: Registered Retirement Income Funds Rules Need a Big Update,” authors Alexandre Laurin and William Robson urge the government to re-visit...

Fair-value accounting reveals Ottawa’s employee pension obligations to be larger and more volatile than official figures, a problem shared by European and US state governments. This exposes taxpayers to an unmeasured $65 billion funding shortfall. To keep pace with benefit accruals and stop...