Ontario Retirement Pension Plan Committee Hearings

Earlier this year, we had written about the Ontario government's plan to implement an Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP) for Ontario workers and its potential implications for employers.

Briefly, the ORPP would be a "defined benefit (DB) type of plan" with an employee/employer contribution rate of up to 1.9% each, requiring mandatory participation, subject to exemptions for workers who already participate in a "comparable" workplace pension plan. While the meaning of comparable workplace pension plan is yet to be finalized, the Ontario government has indicated that its preference is for only DB plans and target benefit multi-employer pension plans to be considered comparable. Under this approach, employers with defined contribution plans and/or group registered retirement savings plans would not be exempt.