Job Termination
Survey reveals pension fearsAlmost as many Canadians are worried about how they'll pay the bills and buy food once they pass age 65 as the number who are fearful over the future of health care, says a national labour organization. SANDRA CORDON |
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 [ 2004-09-01 ] |
The future of pension plans and how much income people think they'll have after retirement were among the top concerns for respondents to a series of surveys by the Canadian Labour Congress.
While health care remained the top priority of those surveyed, people said their second biggest worry was "not having enough to live on after retirement," the CLC found in polling data released to The Canadian Press.
Labour congress officials were so surprised by the findings that they repeated the survey twice more over the last five months and came up with similar results.
"A box under Granville Bridge, that's all you'll be able to afford in this city the way things are going," one man said during a focus group on retirement issues conducted in Vancouver.
"More people are retiring and there aren't enough young people working to support them."
Baby boomers retiring
The polling results come as news reports highlight the growing numbers of aging baby boomers approaching retirement age, a trend that could put greater pressure on an already stretched social safety net. At the same time, Canada's birth rate is declining, meaning a smaller working-age population supporting a growing group of retirees.
And more business headlines reveal company failures, wobbly financial markets and the impact of all this on workers' pension plans.
While 82% of the 1,003 adults surveyed in March for the CLC said health care issues were their biggest concern, 73% said their second biggest worry was not having enough income after age 65.
That was a dramatic jump over findings two years earlier, when just 54% told pollsters they worried about post-retirement income.
Protecting the environment, fighting crime, defending Canadian jobs and fighting "corruption" in the awarding of federal government contracts were the next highest public policy priorities identified in the March survey.
Conducted by Toronto-based Vector Research, its margin of error was 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
"People are worried," Ken Georgetti, labour congress president, said in an interview. "It's time Prime Minister Paul Martin established a new minister of state for retirement security to deal with people's concerns."
"Canadians want the federal government to show leadership on retirement security," Georgetti said in a letter to Martin dated Aug. 18 calling for the new ministry.
"Retirement security is the No. 2 worry of people across Canada ... In spite of all this worry, retirement security is almost ignored in public discourse."
A new ministry doesn't seem likely.
A spokeswoman in the Prime Minister's Office said the issues are already dealt with by Liberal MP Tony Ianno, minister of state for caregivers and families.
"By appointing (Ianno), the prime minister is demonstrating these issues are important," said Amy Butcher.
Increasingly, pension experts have been raising the alarm about the sustainability of some pension plans.
In June, the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada warned that 59% of the defined-benefit pension plans in the country have insufficient assets to pay the pensions they have promised.
The accountancy group surveyed 847 pension plans and concluded that the total shortfall is $160 billion.
It suggested this points to "a looming social and economic crisis for Canada's defined-benefits pension plan holders and plan sponsors if the situation is not addressed."
Pension fears continued running high in a second labour congress survey in May.
It found that 73% of the 1,131 people polled said one of the federal government's top priorities must be "protecting pensions and retirement incomes."
The margin of error in that poll, which asked what should be "an absolute priority" for Ottawa, was 2.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. A third, smaller survey conducted earlier this month reached a similar conclusion, with 69% of respondents saying retirement income is a top priority.
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