This presentation provides information about the FCAC's public awareness strategy for Canada's new Financial Consumer Protection Framework including an overview of FCAC's planned activities and resources and highlights the importance of collective action to inform Canadians. Additional promotional toolkits can be found on the FCAC website.
Since taking office in the fall of 2015, the Liberal government has made important changes to the publicly administered components of Canada’s retirement income system (RIS). It has restored the age of eligibility for benefits under Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) to 65, it has increased the top-up on GIS benefits for single elderly persons, and it has agreed with the provinces to enhance Canada Pension Plan (CPP) benefits, starting in 2019.
Each of these changes, on its own, contributes to one of the two main objectives of the RIS: to minimize the people’s risk of poverty in old age and to enhance their ability to retain their standard of living as they move from employment to retirement. However, as Bob Baldwin and Richard Shillington show in this study, when examined together, the changes are problematic and incomplete.
The federal government has indicated that it will expand WITB by approximately $250 million per year beginning in 2019 to “provide additional benefits that roughly offset incremental Canada Pension Plan (CPP) contributions for eligible low-income workers.”1 The changes to CPP will be phased in, starting in 2019. These changes mean that workers will be paying higher CPP contributions from their paycheques. Low-income workers especially could feel the impact on their take-home pay. This backgrounder provides an introduction to the program, explores how it impacts low-income workers, and how it could be improved.
