Wynne hints beefed-up CPP could spell end of provincial pension plan

A deal could be in the works to enhance the Canada Pension Plan so that the new Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP) will not need to be implemented.

As Canada’s finance ministers gather for a summit in Vancouver on Monday, Premier Kathleen Wynne is hinting the retirement scheme she developed to complement CPP could be redundant if the other provinces agree to come closer to Onta- rio’s proposed payouts.

“We are very eager and have been from the beginning to see a CPP enhancement. That was our starting point,” Wynne told reporters Wednesday in Windsor.

“We’ve developed the ORPP plan because we had a previous federal government that wasn’t interested in having this discussion about a retirement security crisis across the country,” she said, referring to former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper’s administration.

The Ontario scheme is supposed to launch in 2018, with workers at companies with 500 employees or more that do not have pension plans contributing 0.8 per cent of their pay to the ORPP.

That will eventually rise to 1.9 per cent in 2020 and be matched by employers. By 2020, all companies without registered plans would be affected.

But since Harper was defeated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals last October, Ottawa has sig- nalled it would like to work with the provinces to improve CPP benefits, which currently pay out a maximum of $13,110 a year.

Updating the CPP requires approval of seven provinces with two-thirds of the population. Wynne said that there may be enough movement for her to accept a beefed-up CPP even if it does not pay out benefits as great as the ORPP.

The Ontario government has calculated workers and their employers will each pay in the equivalent of between $2.16 and $4.50 a day with annual benefits upon retirement ranging from $6,410 to $12,815.

Because federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau was a former pension adviser to Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, officials at Queen’s Park believe they have a powerful CPP ally in Ottawa.