CBC News answers your questions about the government of Alberta’s plan to potentially create its own retirement plan and pull out of the Canada Pension Plan.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Buchanan expects that if the government of Alberta tries to proceed with leaving the CPP under current demands that could amount to withdrawing more than half the value of the plan, it will end up in the courts and litigated.
However, their calculations have been disputed by independent experts such as University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe, who said, if both Ontario and Alberta used the LifeWorks formula to leave the CPP, they’d withdraw more money than currently exists in the plan — a “potentially absurd outcome.”
And if Alberta were to take the 53 per cent proposed in its report, that could destabilize the fund entirely and would “dramatically” increase incentives for British Columbia and Ontario to also leave the CPP — and to do it quickly.
“It’s very unclear how portability might be affected if if Alberta pulled out of the CPP,” said Bill VanGorder, chief advocacy officer for the Canadian Association of Retired Persons.
“It’s supposed to represent about 25 per cent of your earnings [from] while you’re working,” said Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, director of financial security research at Toronto Metropolitan University’s National Institute on Ageing.
MacDonald admits that because a large majority of Canadians do not have access to an employer pension plan or to sufficient private savings, a stable CPP is of critical importance to all members.
The original article contains 1,239 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
As a poor person am I ever glad the conclusion they drew was we made people so poor we can’t afford to lose this fund.
While there are definitely poor policies that have resulted in contributing to making us more poor (e.g housing crisis and crazy stupid rents), people are exceptionally bad at managing their own money as well.
We live in the age of consumerism where millions of people are wasting money buying things they can’t afford or don’t need, racking up more and more credit card debt instead of paying it off and saving for themselves.
Many people actually are making enough money to save (maybe not enough) but they just don’t. At least these people will have been contributing to CPP and have something, instead of continuing to live their unnecessarily debt laden lives.
This is one of the reasons they up’d the % we contribute. Even people that can save, aren’t. They raised the amount to help cover for that trend.
And just on this topic - I don’t know what things are like today, but when I was in high school, there was practically nothing taught on personal finance and how to save or how to budget so you can save. We need to teach this in school to help ready people for their future.
You forgot that productivity has substantially increased and failed to mention that the wealth from that productivity has essentially been stolen for decades now since the 70’s/80’s. It’s not all to blame on people buying shit but the wealthy stealing from workers instead.