Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Stats Canada puts out tons of information, but I always find interesting spins on some of the stuff (no I am not going to comment on Frozen Chicken Futures). Today they published the value of Employer Pension Plans in Canada. This is the value of employee pension plans that are being administered by their employers. Evidently they lost value last quarter but have since rebounded (you can read all about this here).

What is more interesting to me is the following interesting statement:

About 4.6 million Canadian workers are members of trusteed plans. Of these, 2.5 million are public sector workers in municipal, provincial, and federal governments and enterprises, crown corporations, government boards, commissions and agencies, and public educational and health institutions. Private sector workers make up the remaining 2.1 million.

So over 4 million Canadians are in a Pension Plan of some kind, I think that is a pretty good thing. Remember a pension means you have income other than the Canada Pension Plan, and you can use your RRSP moneys as savings, if you can live on your Pension.

Currently I am in a very good pension plan, that is unfortunately about to be capped for me. I understand the reasons why my employer is doing this, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it either. It seems more private companies are figuring out just how much of a burden that a Pension Plan can be (not just administering it either, but also having to keep moneys in it).

If you have a pension, good for you, if you don’t better make sure your RRSP’s are getting their maximum, because you are going to be able to live on your CPP benefits.