Alberta pension panel hears renewed call for hard numbers before CPP exit referendum
CBC
The panel gathering feedback on whether Alberta should quit the Canada Pension Plan heard renewed calls Tuesday for hard, negotiated numbers before the issue goes to a referendum.
Panel chairman Jim Dinning also got an earful from one Albertan who called out the province's assertion it is entitled to leave the CPP with $334 billion — more than half the fund's assets.
"Everyone here, including yourself, knows there's no world — none — where Alberta gets half the Canada Pension Plan," the caller, identified as Scott from Medicine Hat, told Dinning.
"It's based on insanity.
"What Alberta says we are entitled to is irrelevant," he added.
"And if we don't have an actual number from the people who control the CPP of what we would get if we pull out, any referendum is based on a lie."
Scott, and a number of other callers, called for hard, agreed-upon figures between Alberta and the feds before casting a ballot.
Caller Patrick from Lethbridge said, "I also have a problem with the actual numbers that we've come up with.
"It seems to me that (it's) a real large portion of the CPP that we were basing this on, and the math doesn't add up in my mind."
Virginia from Lethbridge said, "To me, it doesn't make sense that when we have roughly 12 per cent of the population that Alberta expects that we're going to get half of the Canada Pension (Plan)."
Dinning replied, "It seems implausible, I'll grant you that."
But he urged Virginia to revisit the Alberta government-commissioned LifeWorks report. LifeWorks computed the $334-billion figure, citing Alberta's relatively younger working population, higher incomes, fewer seniors drawing CPP and years of high contributions from Albertans.
"Nobody else has come up with a recent number to tell us what that actual number is, so the government has gone with the professional actuaries (at LifeWorks) that did this report," said Dinning.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has estimated Alberta is owed about 16 per cent of the fund, but the Alberta government wants it to show its work.