Ontario Pension Policy Making and the Politics of CPP Reform, 1963-2016

After years of pension policy drift in a broader context of global austerity, the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) was enhanced for the first time in 2016 to expand benefits for Canadian workers. This article examines Ontario's central role in these reforms. The deteriorating condition of workplace plans, coupled with rising retirement income insecurity across the province's labour force, generated new sources of negative feedback at the provincial level, fuelling Ontario's campaign for CPP reform beginning in the late 2000s. The political limits of policy drift and layering at the provincial level is considered in relationship to policy making at the national level. As shown, a new period of pension politics emerged in Canada after 2009, in which the historical legacy of CPP's joint governance structure led to a dynamic of "collusive benchmarking," shaped in large part by political efforts of the Ontario government, leading to CPP enhancement.