Retirement Security for Everyone!
Canada is at a crossroads, just like it was forty years ago when it was time to do something about our health care system. Today, we need to do something about retirement income, and we need to do it soon.
It’s time to change some things
The problem with Canada’s retirement income system has become so obvious that even bank economists have started to admit the RRSP approach has failed. There’s too much risk and not enough security to ensure that, after a lifetime of work, people can retire and live out their last years in dignity.
The federal and provincial governments must:
- Phase in a doubling of payouts from the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and the Quebec Pension Plan (QPP).
- Immediately increase Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) for all retirees.
Our governments must also:
- Create a national pension insurance fund to ensure that workers’ defined benefit pensions aren’t at risk when employers go under or speculative bubbles go bust. The United States has a pension guarantee fund covering up to about $50,000 of pension income.
- Regulate financial products to ensure that risks are reasonable and clear to all investors, and to ensure that rating agencies are truly independent.
- Regulate pension fund investments in risky financial instruments and prosecute any cases of fraud.
- Regulate pension funds for solvency in order to secure promised pension benefits.
- Provide any temporary solvency funding relief to employers in serious financial trouble on a case-by-case basis only. Applications must be approved by the workplace bargaining agent (the union) or a majority of pension beneficiaries (in a non-union workplace).
Whether retirement is just around the corner or something that’s decades into the future, Labour’s plan for Retirement Security has clear benefits for everyone - no matter where you work.