CHP Canada would overhaul the broken Canada Pension Plan with a new Personal Income Security Account. 

We have an aging population, StatsCan projects that (PDF) there will be just 3 working-age people for each senior by 2027. This compares to 1966 when there was 7.7 working people for every senior.

With Canada Pension Plan, each person works to cover the retirement of the retirees ahead of them. Three people cannot adequately support sufficient pension for one person particularly as the ratio between those who work to those who are retiree will continue to grow. 

We must do something different.

A Personal Income Security Account would provide a portable investment portfolio, vested in the name of each worker, for health, employment and retirement income.

How will this plan work?

Beginning with an individual’s first job, they and their employer would contribute to the plan as a source deduction, just as we do now with CPP and EI, and in Ontario, the Health fund.

Beginning with one’s first job, 10% of an individual’s income would begin to accumulate in his or her account: 5% contributed by the employee and 5% by the employer.

In the event of some unforeseen circumstance, like unemployment or illness, the individual would be allowed to withdraw up to 15% per year of what had accrued in the account. After that, government assistance would meet the needs of any individual or family.

The account would never be completely depleted, but would continue to grow.

Welfare, disability and healthcare would continue to be government programs. We will always have what we may call “the deserving poor”, and we must care for them with the utmost compassion.

It is no secret that in Canada we also have serious abuse of our social systems. The undeserving poor, those who would choose to abuse the system and thereby the taxpayer, will be motivated—for example, in the case of unemployment—to find new employment quickly so as to use as little as possible of the allowable 15% of their account. As a party we believe very strongly in individual responsibility and accountability, but not disproportionately to compassion.

This policy would inculcate an ethic of individual responsibility in the majority of people, reduce payouts as a result, and therefore allow us to care of the truly unfortunate much better.

Voters would do well to seriously consider the CHP’s better solution for personal income security.

 

Updated: March 28, 2025