Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
ca
In a study published last year by the Institute f or Research on Public Policy (IRPP), I projected that about half of middle income Canadians (with working age incomes between $35 and 80 thousand) could expect a substantial drop in living standards af ter age 65, taking account not only of OAS, GIS and C/QPP, but also RRSPs, workplace pensions and home ownership. It is not a pretty picture. Still, raising the age of entitlement to public pensions is not necessarily a bad idea. A prudent government should be planning f or the retirement of Canadas baby boom cohort. But this should be an adult conversation about what is f air between generations, a conversation which does not f ocus on OAS (and GIS) in isolation f or the simple reason that C/QPP, RRSPs, workplace pensions and T FSAs, among others, are all involved in providing retirement incomes, and they interact in sometimes complex ways. Gradually raising the age of entitlement to public pensions, even to age 70, would bring the average length of the retirement period back to where it was in 1966 when the C/QPP and GIS were introduced. Allowing f lexibility in starting OAS benef its a f ew years bef ore or af ter the normal age, as is already the case with C/QPP, with appropriate actuarial adjustment, would be worthwhile. Indeed, adjusting pension payments in line with changes in lif e expectancy, as was legislated in Sweden in the 1990s, should be considered. But there needs to be some give as well as take most importantly enlarging the C/QPP to ensure that more Canadians will have adequate incomes in their retirement years, and indexing OAS not only f or inf lation, but also a bit more when the economy is growing well, so that seniors can share in real increases in Canadians standard of living. In the end, the real issue is establishing an inter-generational agreement on support in old age that young and old alike will agree is f air. Michael Wolfson is an expert advisor with EvidenceNetwork.ca, and Canada Research Chair in Population Health Modeling/Populomics at the University of Ottawa. He is a former Assistant Chief Statistician at Statistics Canada, and spent several periods during his career in the Federal Public Service developing and advising on pension policy.