Western Standard - February 23, 2024


Nadine Wellwood on the formation of an Alberta pension plan #ableg #albertapensionplan

Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Danielle Smith Mercer
The Pipeline： 'It's not eastern bastards,' says Trudeau as he blasts Smith Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse enters Alberta NDP leadership race

Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

177.13

Word count

668

Sentence count

32


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the need for a referendum on leaving the Canada Pension Plan, and why we should vote yes or no to it. We also talk about the unfunded liabilities of the plan, and the benefits it provides.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 this is something that Albertans are going to have to push to make sure that we actually do
00:00:04.180 have an agenda, a referendum. And we are going to be the ones responsible for educating people
00:00:10.680 to make informed decisions. And I think right now there's a lot of distrust of the government,
00:00:15.000 which is obviously an obstacle that we have to overcome. And Justin Trudeau helps every which
00:00:20.220 way he can to make that more obvious to Albertans that obviously the government at home here,
00:00:26.740 if you trust it or don't trust Daniel Smith and the UCP, is somewhat irrelevant. I think it's an
00:00:32.520 obvious fact that we cannot rely on the federal government and a centralized government in Ottawa
00:00:38.620 to act in our best interest. So much easier to influence a government here at home.
00:00:44.000 And then the other big obstacle I'm seeing is this false sense of security, where people just don't
00:00:48.680 have the correct data and the correct information around the Canada pension plan. And so again,
00:00:53.820 if we want to make this happen, then it's we, the people, it's Albertans that are going to have
00:00:58.920 to make sure that it does happen. Well, and that's part of what's up. Like one of the quick
00:01:04.980 things that happened when the discussion came up was suddenly the Canada pension plan was trumpeted by
00:01:10.300 defenders as being one of the best pension plans on earth. And we'd be insane to leave that plan.
00:01:14.900 And why would we dare leave such a plan? But when you look at it, working an entire lifetime and
00:01:21.160 contributing into it right now, the average payout is less than $800 a month. I'm sorry,
00:01:26.260 but that doesn't sound like I have to have a good plan to me.
00:01:29.520 Yeah. Well, the average individual who benefits from the Canada pension plan receives on average
00:01:35.100 $758. And that's after 40 years of contributing. If you take a look at what that individual had,
00:01:42.580 they contributed that money on their own. And then the flexibility, let's say in their own
00:01:47.080 retirement savings plan, would have given them a lot more money with a lot more flexibility,
00:01:52.300 money that they could have then left to their spouse or to their children should they die before
00:01:59.820 having received the pension plan or afterwards. So the Canada pension plan, according to the Mercer
00:02:05.900 report, which is a CFA, Chartered Financial Analyst report, only ranks 12, which is not bad,
00:02:11.100 but it's not the best. Even when you look at the returns, I mean, the returns are not reflective
00:02:18.100 of what people receive. So, and here's two numbers that I'd really like to leave with people if we do
00:02:24.900 nothing else today is that one, there's $1.14 trillion of unfunded liabilities with the Canada
00:02:31.460 pension plan. Nobody talks about that. It was hidden in the chief actuary report at the very,
00:02:38.320 very end under acknowledgements. Well, I think that deserves a little bit more of attention than
00:02:43.240 just an acknowledgement. And then the other fact that I really want to bring to people's attention
00:02:47.360 is that come 2026, so just two years away, the chief actuary reports on this as well,
00:02:54.400 that the expenditures for the Canada pension plan will exceed the benefits or the contributions. So
00:03:02.700 not only do we have 1.14 trillion already, which has grown from 884 in 2019, and it's continuing to
00:03:11.100 grow, it is actually going to just exponentially explode when the actual expenditures for the first
00:03:19.180 time exceed the contributions that are coming in. Because what people don't realize is the Canada
00:03:24.040 pension plan, the base is a pay as you go. So it's the people that are contributing today that are paying
00:03:30.260 for the retirees. The retirees that think it's my money, your money was spent long ago. It is the
00:03:37.360 people who are working today that are giving you your pension. You can become a Western Standard
00:03:42.100 member for just $10 a month or $99 a year for unlimited access.