Report from expert commission contains 142 recommendations
The Ontario Expert Commission on Pensions has released A Fine Balance: Safe Pensions, Affordable Plans, Fair Rules, a 222-page report containing 142 recommendations for reforming and reinvigorating Ontario's pension system.
Established in November 2006 by the Minister of Finance, the commission’s mandate was to review Ontario's occupational pension system, the first such review in over 20 years. Issues addressed included: declining coverage of workers by occupational pensions plans, higher enrolment in defined contribution plans, the underfunding or failure of plans and governance and regulatory concerns.
The first set of recommendations stresses the need for innovation in the pension system. This would include a “pension champion,” a new government agency responsible for collecting and disseminating reliable information about the pension system, amd strategizing and working with stakeholders to improve the system. The report also recommends the development of large plans, to encourage cooperation among small- and medium-sized plans, and the promotion of target benefit plans.
The commission also says the government should look into the expansion of the Canada Pension Plan or the creation of comparable provincial plans, to enhance coverage, control costs and improve benefit portability.
Pension legislation should also be drafted in such a way as to facilitate the introduction of new plan designs as well as new regulatory initiatives, according to A Fine Balance, and pension legislation should be comprehensively reviewed every eight years.
And the government should: support efforts to avoid further divergence in pension policy, legislation and regulation among Canadian jurisdictions; seek cooperation with other provinces to secure necessary changes in federal tax and insolvency legislation; and attempt to secure greater standardization of technical and procedural requirements among pension regulators.
The full report is available at www.pensionreview.on.ca.
