There is now a broad consensus that workplace pension arrangements around the world are sick and in need of strong medicine. Pension coverage and adequacy are too low, and pension uncertainty too high. The prescr iption of some pension experts is to resurrect the traditional defined-benefit (DB)...

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...

Traditional DB and DC pension plans have both become dysfunctional, as have attempts to “prove” that one is superior to the other. Far better that we should devote our energies to designing a new breed of pension plans, adapted to twenty-first-century realities. Such plans strike an...

Accused of changing his mind, the great economist John Maynard Keynes is said to have retorted, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?” In that spirit, the articles in this issue of the Journal challenge conventional pension design and management thinking in important ways

On December 14, 2011, the Wall Street Journal carried an article titled “A Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism” by former US Vice President Al Gore and his partner at Generation Investment Management, David Blood. The article signaled the launch of their white paper on sustainable...

Canadians successfully reformed the Canada/Quebec Pension Plans in the 1990s. Now we must do the same for the rest of our Retirement Income System. This paper offers both a vision and a plan to provide a decent post-work standard of living for the millions of Canadian workers currently...