A new LifeWorks study commissioned by the Alberta government says the province could be entitled to take $334 billion — more than half of assets in the Canada Pension Plan — were it to exit the national plan entirely and start its own fund. The figure has raised eyebrows in pension circles and big questions across the rest of the country: Can Alberta really walk off with half the CPP? And what happens to everyone else if they do? The Financial Post’s Ian Vandaelle breaks down what you need to know about the issue.
In short, yes, but we haven’t been down this road before: no province has left the Canada Pension Plan since its inception in 1966. Quebec never joined up with that pact, mind you, so it’s an outlier that has had its own provincial pension plan from the get-go. From there, life gets more complicated: Under the Canada Pension Plan Act, a province would need to give three years notice to the feds that it intends to exit CPP, enact its own legislation within one year of that notice, and prove its own made-at-home pension plan was roughly comparable in terms of providing that safety net. So, not a swift process. And in Alberta’s case, it’s by no means a done deal. The provincial government plans to consult with residents into early next year to gauge their appetite to leave the plan, with the results determining if a referendum is held sometime in 2024.
So they can leave — but why would they want to?
It boils down to a few things, all of which go hand-in-hand: demographics, economics and a lingering sense of Western alienation. On the first point, Alberta skews young — 66.2 per cent of those living in the province are between the ages of 15 and 64, according to the 2021 census, putting it above the national average of 64.8 per cent. That means more contributors to the plan, rather than those collecting benefits, with the province reckoning it can save somewhere in the neighbourhood of $5 billion a year by repatriating its share. The latter two points have been bedfellows for decades: generations of Alberta politicians have griped about the province over-contributing to so-called have-not provinces through equalization payments, mostly due to the province’s resource wealth, and thus there’s always been a simmer of discontent with allowing Ottawa to control the purse strings.
So what happens now?
We wait and see. With those consultations underway and a referendum possibly in the offing, there’s no chance Alberta leaves CPP until 2027 at the earliest, which, wouldn’t you know it, coincides with the province’s next scheduled general election. Political seas change, and all that, so who knows what will have happened by then.
