According to Canada’s largest union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), 11 million workers in Canada have no workplace pension plan, and existing pension plans are under added stress because of the global economic meltdown.
Besides calling for regulations that protect pension plans from bankruptcy, CUPE recommends doubling the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) to secure pension benefits for the 93% of Canadians who make CPP contributions. The union says the guarantee income supplement also needs to be increased to lift the hundreds of thousands of poor pensioners out of poverty.
CUPE is urging the public to tell Prime Minister Stephen Harper that “there’s an urgent need to solve the pension crisis in this country. All Canadians should have the right to a secure income in their retirement through access to workplace and government-sponsored pension plans.”
