Social Policy in Ontario

Employers should support expansion of the Canada Pension Plan

Posted on May 31, 2016 in Debates

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TheGlobeandMail.com – ROB/Economy/Economic Insight
May 30, 2016.   ANDREW JACKSON

When the federal and provincial finance ministers meet on June 20-21, they will have to decide whether or not to enhance the Canada Pension Plan as promised by the Liberals in the last federal election. This will require the support of at least seven provinces with a combined two-thirds of the population and, effectively, a broad public consensus.

While a bigger CPP would require additional employer premiums, there is a strong public policy case to be made for public pension reform that employers should publicly endorse.

Expansion of the CPP to provide higher benefits for at least middle-income earners has been widely supported by pension experts. The evidence shows that, left to their own devices, many Canadians are just not saving enough to secure a decent retirement, and certainly not enough to make up for the sharp decline of compulsory saving though traditional employer-sponsored pension plans.

It should be recalled that the CPP was deliberately set up in 1966 as a very modest pension plan in the expectation that employers would continue to provide and indeed expand company pension arrangements. But just one in eight private sector workers (mainly union members and senior managers) currently contribute to a traditional defined benefit plan, and almost no new plans are being established.

Former assistant chief statistician Michael Wolfson has shown that the majority of middle-income earners now aged over forty have not saved enough to avoid a significant decline in their living standards in old age. A recent study for the Broadbent Institute by Richard Shillington showed that one-half of all Canadians age 55 to 64 with no employer pension plan have only very modest retirement savings, a median nest egg of just $21,000 for those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000.

The CPP in combination with Old Age Security is the major source of retirement income for most Canadians. It is fully portable between jobs and provides a secure and predictable pension for life, fully indexed to inflation. The only significant problem is that the maximum CPP benefit is very modest, just $1,092.80 a month, and the average benefit is less than one-half of that amount due to years of earnings below the maximum amount and years spent outside of the paid work force.

From an employee perspective, CPP is an extremely efficient way to save for retirement since longevity risks are pooled across the whole population. While contributions (like contributions to traditional employer pension plans) are compulsory, they are matched by employers and provide a decent implicit rate of return. The large CPP Investment Fund operates with low overhead costs and has earned very respectable returns.

While employers would be required to pay half of the cost of the modest premium increase required to finance an enhanced CPP, some business leaders have accepted that there is a strong public policy case for expansion. John Manley of the Business Council of Canada and Perrin Beatty of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce recently argued that governments should “moderately expand mandatory savings for modest-income Canadians.”

Companies that sponsor defined benefit pension plans would not face additional costs from a bigger CPP since the great majority of these plans are fully integrated, meaning that the plans would pay out less as CPP benefits were increased. The financial risk of sponsoring such plans would be diminished.

Increased premiums would also have little net impact on the many responsible employers who provide some support for employee retirement through a defined contribution plan or a matching contribution to group or individual RRSPs. The need for these relatively costly and non-portable arrangements would fall if CPP benefits were expanded.

To be sure, employers who currently make no contribution at all to employee retirement savings would have to pay more under an expanded CPP. Hence the fierce opposition of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. But a modest, phased-in premium increase in the range of 3 per cent of payroll costs up to maximum CPP earnings would not be economically disruptive, as shown by past experience.

Opposition from the financial sector has also been vociferous, mainly reflecting the fact that high-cost mutual funds boost the incomes of financial advisers and the profits of financial institutions. This just underlines the fact that the CPP provides better average returns at much lower costs than individuals can achieve by saving though RRSPs.

Employers should recognize that it will not be beneficial to business if tomorrow’s seniors face major reductions in their purchasing power. This will not only lower demand in the economy, but will also likely result in higher taxes to pay for higher spending on the income-tested Guaranteed Income Supplement to Old Age Security, which is already paid to more than one in three seniors.

Modest expansion of the CPP will help cushion some of the economic and social costs of an aging society in a cost-efficient way. Employers, who now play a much reduced role in the overall retirement system, should urge the federal and provincial governments to agree on a CPP expansion plan and to implement it as soon as possible.

Andrew Jackson is adjunct research professor in the Institute of Political Economy at Carleton University and senior policy adviser to the Broadbent Institute.

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Tags: economy, featured, ideology, participation, pensions, standard of living

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