This week marked a major milestone for working Canadians: our government's enhancements to the Canada Pension Plan have come into force. Starting now, more Canadians will be in a position to achieve their goal of a safe, secure and dignified retirement.
During the last election, we heard citizens here in Thunder Bay-Superior North and across the country who feel they're working harder than ever, but are worried that they won’t have enough money put away for their retirement. Fewer and fewer Canadians have workplace pensions to fall back on. One in four families approaching retirement are at risk of not saving enough.
That’s what motivated us to act. Last year, our government introduced legislation to strengthen the Canada Pension Plan, which will reduce risk for many families. And this week, the CPP enhancements came into force, meaning all of the requirements have been met by Canada's provincial governments to implement these changes to the CPP.
The enhanced CPP will give workers today and future generations of workers a safer retirement by boosting how much each Canadian will get from their CPP pension and by increasing the earnings range covered by the plan.
The maximum CPP retirement benefit will increase by about 50 per cent once fully in place, and we will phase the changes in slowly – from 2019 to 2025 – so the changes are manageable.
An enhanced CPP means Canadians can plan for their retirement with greater confidence and it means more money for retirees to spend on their needs, like healthy food, transportation and housing costs.
With these CPP enhancements now officially in place, we are confident that more Canadians can achieve a safe, secure and dignified retirement. This is just one part of our plan to help the middle class and those working hard to join it.
