The pension plans of federal government employees are relatively generous and badly underfunded, with the Pension Plan for Members of Parliament (MPs), which covers members of the House of Commons and the Senate, standing out on both counts. The MP plan promises much higher retirement incomes...

Governments are major employers, and usually provide defined-benefit (DB) pension plans with full inflation indexing and generous early retirement provisions. Hence, changes in thinking about, and accounting for, the costs of DB pension plans have major implications for government finances. Both...

Advocates of an expanded Canada Pension Plan as a response to Canadian concerns about low incomes in retirement too often promote it as a plan with guaranteed benefits that are fully funded. The CPP looks like a defined-benefit plan, but it is not. Most of its benefits are targets contingent on...

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...

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...

Ottawa has an opportunity in the 2010 Federal Budget to improve retirement saving prospects for many Canadians. In a paper released today, the author outlines straightforward, no-regrets ways Ottawa can facilitate more saving and make cost-effective risk-pooling available to the majority of...