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Are you receiving all of your pension benefits?
Written by Alicia Isaacs
If you are a senior, are you aware of all the Pension benefits available to you? You may be entitled to more than you realize.
David Dewhirst, Client Service Officer, Outreach and Engagement for Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Old Age Security (OAS) on behalf of Service Canada held a Pension Plan Workshop on Friday, March 7, 2008 at the Kelmucw Sharing Place Society.
According to Dewhirst, the purpose of the workshop is to educate rural communities of the benefits that are available to them under the Pension Plan.
OAS is a taxable benefit and to qualify for it one must be 65 years or more, be a Canadian citizen or landed immigrant and lived in Canada long enough after the age of 18.
There are two types of OAS - full or partial pensions. To qualify for the full pension, seniors must have lived in Canada all their lives. The partial pension is for seniors who have not lived in Canada long enough to qualify for the full pension.
For low-income seniors, additional income is available; Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) is a non-taxable benefit which is extra money added to the OAS, if one meets eligibility requirements; Allowance - to help younger spouses or common-law partners between ages 60-64 until they turn 65 to be eligible for the OAS pension; and Allowance for the Survivor - the spouse or common-law partner has died and the surviving spouse has not remarried.
OAS is a portable benefit but the GIS is not; if you leave Canada for another country for 6 months the recipient will no longer be eligible for the GIS.
Canada Pension Plan (CPP) pays benefits for retirement, disability and survivors. The Retirement pension is the easiest to qualify for.
The amount of CPP one gets is based on how good the work earnings were and how many years CPP is paid into.
Everyone has a Contributory Period under CPP. It starts the month after age 18 or January 1966. The Contributory Period ends the last month before the Retirement pension starts, the month after a person’s death or the month of the 70th birthday, whichever is earlier.
To qualify for CPP Retirement pension one must have made one valid payment into the Plan, be 65 years old or between 60 and 64 if you have stopped or mostly stopped working.
Legal or common-law spouses can also share their Retirement pensions.
Disability Pension is more difficulty to qualify for. One must have met the contributory requirements and have a severe and prolonged disability; have lost the capacity to work at all.
To qualify for the Survivor Benefit the deceased spouse must have paid into CPP for about 3 to 9 years. CPP can exclude from calculation some periods of low or zero income called a drop out period. For example, the child rearing period; the time you spent raising children under seven can be dropped out of the calculation of the benefit.
For more information contact Service Canada at 1-800-277-9914 or visit the website at www.sdc.gc.ca.
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