Never mind that reducing the choices available to a fund manager can result in negative consequences for pensioners
Some Canadian institutional investment and pension funds have faced scrutiny recently because they owned or own shares in American prison-management companies GEO and CoreCivic. That criticism is unwarranted and unfair. These firms operate prisons, detention centres and rehabilitation facilities in the U.S. Given that the U.S. incarcerates more people than anywhere else in the world,…
‘Governments haven't always done a great job of understanding the reality of running a small business’
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business released its Federal Small Business Platform on Wednesday, outlining issues that matter to the group as the nation heads to a federal election in October. “Small businesses employ more than half of Canada's private sector workers and account for 52 per cent of the business-sector GDP,” said CFIB president…
Institutional investment manager has 31 Alberta-based pension, endowment, government and specialty fund clients
Alberta Investment Management Corp. (AIMCo) reported on Thursday that the aggregate return achieved on behalf of its 14 Alberta pension and endowment balanced fund clients was 2.5 per cent net of all costs. The corporation said it actively selects the assets it invests in within each class, and measures its performance relative to a standard…
Franklin Templeton survey also says 22% of self-employed Canadians never intend to retire
A survey released on Wednesday says 21 per cent of Canadian young baby boomers, aged 55 to 64, have not saved anything for retirement. Franklin Templeton's 2019 Retirement Income Strategies and Expectations (RISE) survey also found 46 per cent of Canadian young boomers would consider postponing retirement and 15 per cent of Canadians expect to…
Alberta paid $27.9 billion more into the Canada Pension Plan than what they received in CPP payments over the past 10 years.
A report from the Fraser Institute says Alberta workers paid $27.9 billion into the Canada Pension Plan over and above what retirees in the province received in CPP payments over the past 10-year period. The report - Albertans Make Disproportionate Contributions to National Programs: The Canada Pension Plan as a Case Study - released Wednesday…
But much of the justification for expanding the pension plan is debatable or downright wrong
By Jason Clemens, Jake Fuss and Milagros Palacios The Fraser Institute Canadians likely noticed that their first paycheque of 2019 was slightly smaller than in 2018, even if they got a raise. The decline in after-tax income is because the first of several tax increases to finance an expanded Canada Pension Plan (CPP) took effect…
When the government makes employment more expensive, the sure result is fewer jobs
The federal government began 2019 by taking a bigger bite out of workers’ paycheques: the combined employer and employee Canada Pension Plan payroll tax rose from 9.9 per cent of earnings to 10.2 per cent. It’s the first of five annual payroll tax hikes. By the time the CPP tax hike is fully phased in, a…
Governments around the world will go into the next recession with fewer economic management tools at their disposal
Government deficit and debt numbers in Canada are rising due to accounting changes made to better reflect the true nature of government liabilities. Ontario recently revised its deficit and debt projections (based on advice from its auditor general) to better reflect the true costs of pension liabilities and its electricity programs. And because of the…
To have effective policies, we need clear, understandable indicators for the most important dimensions of poverty
The federal government is to be congratulated on its just-released Poverty Reduction Strategy. The strategy, running to over 100 pages, endorses the idea of an official poverty line, relieving Statistics Canada from the impossible task of finding a purely statistical basis of definition. It further endorses the idea that poverty has many dimensions – including…
More than 6.2 million Canadian workers belonged to employer-sponsored pension plans in the first quarter of this year: StatsCan
The market value of assets held by Canadian trusteed pension funds totalled $1.9 trillion in the first quarter of 2018, up three per cent from the fourth quarter of 2017 and 5.7 per cent higher year over year, said Statistics Canada on Thursday. It said that over 6.2 million Canadian workers belonged to employer-sponsored pension…
Some Canadian institutional investment and pension funds have faced scrutiny recently because they owned or own shares in American prison-management companies GEO and CoreCivic. That criticism is unwarranted and unfair. These firms operate prisons, detention centres and rehabilitation facilities in the U.S. Given that the U.S. incarcerates more people than anywhere else in the world,…
