Leave retirement age the same as it is: Poll

Retirement age should remain at 65 and program should allow retirement at 60 as now indicated. Goverment should increase OAP and CPP for all seniors by a minimum of 3% annually until the total pension per person for a senior male or female is equivalent to a minium of $30K per annum. That is the minimum that it takes to live on in this economy. All present seniors should be bumped up to this level immediately.

Goverment can easily afford this by cutting back on Military Jets @35 Mil each, (Totally unneccessary item) U.S. has enough used jet fighters we could get for far less. Forget about Military ships & subs.Navy and Air Force should be Coast guard & rescue service and transport only. Let the foreign countries fight their own battles and don't waste our manpower & resouces.

So the senior thinks he should get a raise? Kinda self serving isn't that? I'm sure it does take a minimium of 30K a year to live however why haven't you saved for this eventuality (can't say you didn't see it coming).

Why in Canada do people feel they are entitled to full retirement benefits? Personally I put away money every month so that when I hit retirement it will be comfortable and I will not have to rely on anybody but myself. It is simply a lack of foresight and poor spending habits that would lead you to not have anything saved for retirement.

Its great that you think we should lose the military. The issue is in the grand scheme of things its tough being the only kid in the room without a stick. Its great that we live next to the US and therefore don't strictly need a military but it would also put us at a disadvantage when negotiating with other countries. This will become relevent in the future as other coutnries want access to our northern resources. Think the Russians or Chinese would leave "our" territory if we asked nice. Maybe we could ask the Americans to rough them up (because that wouldn't cost anything).

I agree we can probably reduce our military but instead lets use that savings topay down debt so the next generation isn't totally sunk by the baby boomers.

What is important to remember in the discussion of pensions in Canada is that the money involved is not money belonging to anyone but the pensioners. Personally, I have been paying into the canada Pension Plan at a high rate since I was 16 years of age ( I'm 63 now) and I continue to pay even though I was diabled for years and on a drastically reduced salary. I have calculated that the money I invested had been conservatively invested It would amount to over a million dollars. All I want is my money back with accrued interest. My grandkids aren't responsible for that. The government that now tries to tell me that they have to borrow from someone else to pay me my pension consists of thieves who spent my money when they were charged with saving and investing it for me. If they were going to cheat me I would have preferred to waste the money on my own thank you very much. The pension plan came first and noone has has recieved a penny who has not paid thier own way. The propaganda calls seniors "moochers and leechs and appendages that would be better cut off. Are we really so useless that we are now fair game for the politicians to discount us like that and think we are so stupid as to pay them to leave us starving in the streets as the fix our incomes then inflate the economy just because they know they can get away with it ?? I think that they have pushed the aging MAJORITY in the country about as far as they can. I hearthat an MP gets a very large pension after serving only a few years. I believe that every cent of that pension plan should be drained into the CPP fund and no MP offered a pension should any Canadian senior anything they have earned.

I am not retired (or even close to that age) and I agree with Western Guy. The age needs to be raised and the payouts dropped.

Brian Morris is yet another Canadian who feels that by simply being alive he is entitled to a certain standard of living through no effort on his part. The rest of us should pay tribute to him for having lived so long. How do you figure you are worth $15 an hour (30,000/2000 hours) for doing nothing ? The minimum wage is 2/3 or that in Ontarion (too high) and those people work.

As for Ken..if you think your CPP contributions would have made you a millionaire even conservatively invested then I think I see your problem of not having enough to retire...your math is way off. The present employee CPP cap is about $2200 a year and it was nowhere near that when you started working.

Even if we add employer contribututions and round up to $5000 a year:

Starting at 0 as an investment and adding $5000 a year at the end of the year (again vastly more than you would have contibuted even counting employer share) at a "conservative" 5% and compunded quarterly you would have less than $650,000 over 40 years. Nowhere near the million you think you are entitled to. Keep in mind this doesn't include any fees for management or anything else which can be up to 2.5%.

If you can't save for your retirement then too bad. Go get a job at Wal-Mart as a greeter, at Mc Donalds, or back where you started as a paper delivery boy. My future is not to support the poor decisions you made in the past.

The baby boomer generation has presided over the largest theft of wealth in the history of humankind with their lavashing of benefits on themselves that 3 or 4 generations from now will still be paying for. I feel nothing for the elderly, many of whom now expect to live on a pension as long or longer than they actually worked (work age 20 to 60 is 40 years and lving until 90 or 100 is not that uncommon now).

As my favourite sign in a local shop says:

No senior discounts. You have had twice as long to earn it.

As someone who is single and pays 6 figures in income tax to support a growing bgroup of retired boomers (OAS/CPP/Health) I would have been happy to see them raise it even further.

Leave retirement age at 65. We only live once. Let us enjoy our lives, spend more time with our family and grandchildren. Take vacations while we still can. Those added 2 years doesn't seem alot, but it really makes a difference. I have been working since 17 yrs of age. I have already put in 34 years of work. We should all retire as soon as you put in 30 yrs. of service. We should definitely have the option to retire at 65 or even 60, just like in Europe. Now that's smart.

Interesting comments above. I must say I cannot agree with Brian, the first poster - every senior regardless of their contribution history deserves a raise? Really? I sure wouldn't want to work at a company that rewarded all employees the same regardless of effort.

I have had a plan to retire at 62 since i was in my 30's. I am in my early 40's now and still very much want to stick to this number. I understand that we are all living longer, but i don't particularly want to wait until I am in my 70's to have the freedom to plan my days and life without work. You cannot bank on having great health in your older years. I certainly plan on being active into my older age, but you never know what life will throw at you.

Retirement is a very personal thing that many people unfortunately do not spend near enough time thinking about or planning until they get close to it. It truly is something you need to plan for over decades and for some reason i have been planning for it since my late 20's. I am fascinated with the whole subject and have been looking at retirement calculators since then too trying to understand what I will need to make my personal goal a reality. I truly have been enjoying my working years, but i work to live rather than live to work. I am looking forward to the years when i can help my children through University and spend more time with my spouse on vacations.

One key will be to have the mortgage paid off in my early 50's and then have my remaining working years with much larger savings rates. It truly is about making choices. And, with the markets being so volatile now, i don't think we can rely on quite the same returns so we must save more.

Giovanna...another person who thinks it's ok for people to be retired longer than they worked because someone else can pay for it.

How do you people think this economically possible ? Oh right...lets tax the oil companies and the banks. They VERY corporations that your CPP is most heavily invested in thus shooting yourselves in the foot again.

http://www.cppib.ca/files/F2012_-_YE/Publicly-Traded_Equity_Holdings_-_CDN_-_March_31_2012_-_Eng.pdf

If you idiots want to keep following Tommy the Commie right into the same mess Europe is in then you are appendages that are better cut off.

Nothing wrong with leaving the pension age at 65 BUT start the payments at a lower level and increase the level as people get older.
Ideally the most fair system would involve a set of physicals every 5 years starting at 50 to predict your age of death with 100% pension being payable 10 years before predicted death. People who have worked hard and sacrificed their health for the countries well being could retire earlier. MP's and others in great health could have their government pensions pushed back till they're in their 80's.
Besides, what's this rush to retire anyway? Why not reduce everyone's work week and make being employed a much more positive experience.
Heck when most people retire their lives tend to turn into a series of queues anyway. Line up for the Dr, Line up for the Cruise line, line up for breakfast special at Niagara Falls Denny's, etc..

A Good retirement age is when your financially secure enough to do so. Considering today's current manipulated financial circumstances, were all on course for working till dead. At least my generation is.... Us newer generationors may not have to work as hard thanks to technological advances. But it takes us nearly twice as long to earn the same amount value wise then it did for our parents say 20 years ago. An example is when minimum wage was 50cents/hr and rent was $20/month. Rent maybe accounted for 1/4 of your wage. Nowadays Rent is $600/mth and with minimum wage is costing us nearly half of our wages working for the minimum. If I had my way I would refuse paying into CPP alltogether. I look at my parents who retiured at 65. They both only got 4 years or so to enjoy retirement before passing. After that the government takes our parents hard earned money. Think about it do you all seriously trust the government or other people to spend your money.. Our government invests our money as do corporations we work for when paying into these pension schemes. When the moneys lost nobody's on the hook for that money. It's called moral hazard and quite frankly I don't trust any organized entity like a country with my money. Especially considering the fact that our country can't even follow it's own monetary policies and constitutional laws which have lead this country down a narrow path with an insolvent debt load. Seriously, our system is flawed is too many ways. Look at our country's defecite before and after 1974 you'll all see exactly what I mean. Our government sold us down the drain and they can't be trusted.

Keep the retirement age at 65. Our young people need good jobs that are currently being held by senors. There comes a time for us all to step aside and make room for the next generation.
Life is much too short not to be enjoyed.

With regard to CPP and Old age Security, too many Canadians are looking for a free ride after sherking their own responsibiltiy to save for retirement. Advice to young people, START SAVING NOW ! You know our government will do its best to cut into your retirement.

It doesn't matter how much money each person pays in or for how long, the government will mishandle it anyway. I have 0 faith in todays governments, they all know they don't have to be accountable so why even try. The only thing they care about is getting thier name on the public sevice list so they can reap the benifits for minimal productivity. If government was privately run it would have been laid off decades ago. Cost of living going up at un controllable rates while paychecks go backwards. All the while the consumer is getting taken for everything we buy and are forced to buy. I say clean out the parliment and start fresh time to get some new young fresh ideas in that house of cobwebs and special interest.

Chazz - quit dumping on seniors who have been paying into the CPP for mega years and telling them they are "living off someone else". You get from the CPP what YOU have put in, not others. Actually, to be completely honest, it was the generation AHEAD of todays seniors who got a Canada Pension without paying into it at all - and yes, there was plenty of whining by todays seniors about paying for the previous generation - but at least they had an argument - you dont. And your math is interesting by todays standards, but totally inaccurate for reality. You dont realize today the days of 21% mortgages, nor that, believe it or not, during the same era (early 80s) Canada Savings Bonds paid out at 19% (you can look it up). Assessing 5% per annum fits your argument quite well but to go back and put max contributions from 1970 - 2011 at the going rate at the time is the only way to validate your stand, and it will be far greater than 650,000.
Now, you want to deal with the OAS and the insane idea of giving people this benefit after 3 yrs in the province is indeed paying recent immigrants for little to no contribution, but your dump on todays seniors for the CPP is inaccurate and wrong. And no, Im not a senior myself - yet.

@ True Canadian

Actually Chazz is correct. Up until the 1990's (bascially for 2/3rds of the time now retiring people were paying into CPP) the CPP rate was only to save 1.8% of your gross wage. Only since 2003 has the rate been 9.9% of gross wages. Basically this means that all the people that have entered the workforce are now paying 5X of their gross wage what you retirees paid in the 1960s to cover current retirees. These are the same retirees that bleat everywhere how they paid their share and now want it back.....

Lets throw some real numbers in. In 1966 the top combined contribution was 158.40 (79.20 for the employee). Assuming a 4% return above inflation (more than fair I think) the total value of an individual that topped out contributions (including both employee and employer contributions) from 1966 to 2012 the fair value of that entire time would be $127,014. Not the (lol) million that Ken thinks it is. That was taking the top payment rate for each year from 1966 to present and future valuing that total at 4% to todays date. Now I know somebody will say but interest was at 19% in the 1980's. Thats great but inflation was 18% at that time so a 4% return above inflation is still reasonable.

Going one step further at today's top monthly payout ($986.67) with a 4% growth rate when retiring at 65 your 127K from above that you contributed is gone just as you turn 79. It should be noted your average 65 year old today can expect to live to 85. Not even factored in are the higher disibility rate payouts, ability to drop poor years from your calculation, women being able to drop child bearing years, survivors benefits etc.

Basically speaking its pretty clear that seniors on average already get more than their share. Further math says that even disregarding all of the above exceptions in fairness all benefits should be cut back to around 77% of their former total (ie instead of $986 as a top rate $760 should be the top).

Isn't financial math fun....

People need to understand that the people who are aging - all of us - did not cause the financial so called crisis.
Corporate greed and high income earner greed is the root cause of our current financial situation. CPP and OAS are both fully able to continue as they are - as proven by proper analysis. It is only the big earners and large corporations and their toady politicians who blame the seniors for getting old. People are only asking for what they have been promised AND have paid into (OAS by income taxes). Canada is nowhere near the Europe situation.

Even if OAS or CPP was short funded, how about a special extra tax on the 1% who earn OVER $500,000 per year. That would cover it and buy the jets as well. But that is Holy Ground, is it not? How dare I suggest that multi millionaires pay more taxes? I must be a commie, right?

p. s. the poster who loves the banks should also love the Bank CEO annual salaries of between 10 and 15 MILLION. They won't be worried about their pension will they?

Amazing, the real point is not whether the seniors deserve the amount in question or whether we should retire at 65 or 70. The real point is that our money and best interests have been pushed aside in favour of corporate and government greed. Someone has ripped us off and here we are saying this is ok we will just accept less and work a few more years.Ther should be more outrage directed at the thieves in power.

Western Guy - adding up to YM contribs from 1971-2011 gives about 70,000 or so, meaning that doubles to 140,000 with employer contribs (source is CAAT). Illl play your game of 4-5 over inflation rates for investment because Im not doin all the calcs individually. Average inflation rate from 1966-2011 was 4.75 % in the US, and even higher in Canada, around 5%. Adding your\Chazz estimate of 4-5 over inflation for investment gain results in Chazz estim of 650-700 Gs after 40 years compounded at 10%. But he is not right saying todays seniors are living off someone else's money as nobody paid for them, its their (and their employers) money who paid for it. Now the previous generation did not make full contribs and still got the pension, so he has got the wrong generation there. But a lot of them lived thru WW1 and WWII and the great depression, so while there was some whining from my generation about funding them, it wont be from me. As I said, Im NOT a senior as you alluded to, but did live thru the 70's -80s recession where 21% mortgages were common, and prices everywhere changed daily like gas prices can today. And inflation prices of 9-11% did NOT result in similar wage increases - instead mass unemployment. And the 60 month rule common in a lot of private plans today was also in effect in those days, so one could possibly not even get full contribs back if spouse dies in proximity.
In general, dont dump on today's seniors, as Ive seen and lived a lot of what they lived thru, and it was certainly no picnic. They are used to paying their way, and have their entire lives. Saying that they are along for a free ride in the CPP is WRONG!!

I know they say too many people are going to be reaching retirement age in the same year time frame, but I'd like to point out that, not everyone makes it to retirement....point in case is my late husband. He died at 43, and because we were common-law (10+ years) and never had any credit cards or bank accounts jointly, when he died, I was denied his claim. (They said I couldn't prove we weren't just "room mates" even though neighbours and relatives all wrote in) The same year Dave died, I know of 7 other families who lost their loved one ALL before 50, and not one of them got their claims approved. Coincidence? Anyways, just saying, a lot of people never make it to retirement, so leave the retirement age alone. I really don't want to have to work till I'm 70....I'm tired already. I've been working since I was 10 and I'm only going on 54 now, 11 more years to go..... :(

Age doesn't matter, money does. We live in a world where money and products control everything. If you have no money, you don't pass go, and you don't collect $200.00. Sound familiar?

I would love to say i could retire at 65, but the truth is it probably won't happen. Times are changing, i don't have a pension and don't expect any help from the government (as they aren't in the business of helping people) just like the banks aren't in the business of trying to help you save money. Both businesses are in the business of making profit and spending your money.

Remember, at the end of the day, none of us really have a say, unless we all come together.

@ Ture Canadian

140K in contributions since 1971? Your total employer and employee contributions from 1971 to 2011 would be $71,232 (you have only contributed $35,616). Dont believe me. Check out: http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/isp/cpp/contribrates.shtml
It requires a little math but the answer is pretty clear....

10% interest on your SAFE investment? What planet are you from? Even at that "ridiculous" rate you would only have accumulated $341,271. Reaslistically its more like 4% but for arguments sake lets split the difference and say 7%. At that rate we are talking $194,786.

So no True Canadian you haven't amassed 650-800Gs LOL. I love how your inability to actual calculate it allows you to pad your number 3-4X. The numbers don't lie.

Also answer me True Canadian how it seems reasonable that seniors contributed 3.6% of their income from 1966 to 1986 while now younger Canadians are paying 9.9% (combined employer & employee). It makes it pretty obivous we are supporting you.

The seniors of today have run up huge government debt (that didn't exist before they came along) caused CPP to be very underfunded before the 1990s and is still probably underwater now even with the much higher contributions young Canadians will face forever. This means that young Canadians have to pay tax to pay your debts and contribute extra CPP amounts to cover your larger withdrawals than what you contributed. And instead of a we are sorry you instead say (like Brian at the top) "give us more."

However "hard" seniors had it it is nothing compared to what they are going to put their grandchildren through trying to pay for their national level financial ineptitude.......

I am 63, unfortunately I lost my mental health 10 years ago. I have made a recovery, but my pension is gone, I needed it and I also collected disability from the government. Having said all that, I like the idea I can work past 65. It makes no difference if my retirement is low, I pride myself in my recovery and my self-reliance. No one is totally self reliant, and I certainly am very grateful for CPP disability, "A God Sent". It didn't pay much, but kept me from being homeless.

I have a home again, that with a mortgage. Government helped when I need it. I will need some help when I can't work anymore, as I lost my pension savings when I was sick. My point is, look to CPP, OAS and GIS not something that is the all in all, but to maintain some kind of a normal life. I have so very little, and yet I have enough to live and be happy (content) with my life. Personally, if the government can't pay like they used to, then adjustment are made. It is just simple fact of life, just as it in family budgets, that is a given in life.

The govenment states the system as it was is unaffordable
So if they change retirement ages, it should change now for all people and existing pensioners should now have their pensions reduced by say 10 %, otherwise, continueing to pay current pensioners and delaying the OAS for 10 years or so just gives full pensions to almost all babyboomers, sucking even more money out of the system which then leaves the younger people to pay more and delay their payouts for two years
Not fair but typical of our political vote buying of the masses !!!

As I will get no pension from employment (serving industry) Have had to plan my own investments. But will have to rely somewhat on my CPP/OAS
If we have to wait an extra 2 years for it to kick in, why shouldn't the politians have to wait for their huge pensions as well?

I think retirement should be moved up to 67 with OAS. The baby boomers will be using up most of the cpp I am almost certain they will have no choice but to raise retirement unfortunately.

To Western Guy,
Your comments are as usual idiotic, All seniors collecting pensions today that paid into the plan and paid taxes there whole working life deserve every penny they get as we all will at some point. I wonder who put food on your table when you were a kid and worked longer hours for less money and poor benefits and poor health and safety laws. things have come a long way in the last 30 or 40 years but dummies like you who feel they are getting screwed over are pathetic. you would not have the good jobs or safe work enviroments schools and roads and a much hiogher standard of living were it not for all the seniors efforts in the last 30 to 40 years you poorly educated and uninformed dumbass .As for the debt of our nation blame it on the government not the people we all benefit equally from the spending spree as we have to pay the bills down the road . As for you if you dont like the system you can always leave I know I said it already but I will say it again as self serving people like you are just plain irritating Dumbass

I also agree by the way the retirement age should stay at 65 period. I have no interest in continuing to work past that point as I paid into my own pension plan and CPP and expect to collect all benefits coming to me. If things change before I retire I will have to live with it . I have not seen anyone starving to death in my neigbourhood seniors or youths. Life and money is what you make it and if you are smart you can enjoy a good living and retirement in this country and will for years to come if you are lazy and feel entitled you get to reap the reward for your behaviour and lack of initiative. Any person in this country that wants a job that pays well can find one if he puts in the effort. So make your own way, pay your own bills and dont worry about the rest of us .We all had to put up with different challenges and setbacks over the years and from what I can see the next generation will to. That is how the world works people.