Alberta's Pension Plan Fact Sheet

What you need to know about Danielle Smith's plan to pull out of the Canada Pension Plan:

• Danielle Smith is trying to take $334 billion from CPP - 53% of the assets on the fund.
• The amount Danielle Smith and the UCP are claiming from CPP is unrealistic. If British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario each withdrew from the CPP, 128% of assets would need to be paid out. Source 
• CPP is the top performing pension fund in the world. Source 
• Quebec created its own provincial pension plan and now pay higher contribution rates than CPP
• Only 21% of Albertans support withdrawing from the Canada Pension Plan. Source
• 54% of businesses believe withdrawing from the CPP would disadvantage their companies. Source
• Only 27 per cent of small businesses viewed the creation of an Alberta pension plan as a high priority. Source

What others are saying about Danielle Smith's plan to withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan:

“You have to be careful what you wish for. It could unravel the whole thing and a lot of Canadians could be exposed quite dramatically in their pensions,” Goldy Hyder, CEO of the Business Council of Canada

"The amount the [UCP's] report says could be extracted from the CPP is impossible and based on an invented formula," Michel Leduc, Senior Managing Director & Global Head of Public Affairs and Communications

"Smaller plans may be challenged in turbulent economic times and even small investment or management mistakes can create significant deficits requiring higher premiums," Canadian Federation of Independent Business

"I think it was a little problematic that the government's hanging its hat on half the CPP assets, which you think is kind of transparently unreasonable and not going to fly anywhere else in the country," Trevor Tombe, Economist, University of Calgary

"You have a proven solution within the CPP. To go to an unproven solution, with promises of benefits if we get all this windfall money — the risk is just too great for a potential reward...The argument that Smith is making is not valid,” Dan Martin, president of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons

"An Alberta-only pension plan would mean high administration costs to set up and run as well as increasing costs for Albertans as the population ages, political interference in investments and uncertainty and risk for those who can least afford it,” the National Association of Federal Retirees

“If people think this conversation doesn’t affect them, over the next decades they’re going to realize that’s just not true, because the way our demographics are changing it’s going to affect every Canadian...This is a very bad idea at a very bad time,” Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, pension actuary and the director of financial security research at Toronto Metropolitan University think-tank National Institute on Ageing