According to a new report by the C.D. Howe Institute, the government’s proposed pooled registered pension plan (PRPP) legislation is in need of a fix.
In Saving Pooled Registered Pension Plans: It’s Up To the Provinces, authors Keith Ambachtsheer and Edward Waitzer say that the design of PRPPs falls short of the legislation’s primary objective: to ensure that Canadians who do not have a workplace pension will have access to a well-regulated, low-cost, private-sector capital accumulation plan.
“PRPPs are an excellent way to shore the private component of Canada’s pension system,” says Keith Ambachtsheer. “But they have to be designed right to fulfill their purpose. While the federal proposal is a good first step, improvements are needed.”
For PRPPs to work, the authors say the government needs to require employers to enroll their employees in a PRPP (as is the case with the CPP and Quebec Pension Plan), define minimum requirements for default options and create an independent PRPP licensing body to ensure administrators are offering participants “value for money.”
The full study is available on the C.D. Howe website.