The Ontario Chamber of Commerce says the province’s businesses will require offset measures to assist transition towards the new Ontario Retirement Pension Plan.
The 60,000-member business lobby said inside a release Tuesday that the new ORPP will increase costs for employers, even when existing offset measures are taken into account. Those measures include a reduction in Employment Insurance (EI) and Workplace and Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) premiums.
The Chamber’s report discovered that without additional offsets, the typical business can expect to incur $306 a year in extra costs for any worker making $30,000 annually and $554 for a worker making $50,000 annually.
“Our objective would be to ensure that the ORPP does not weaken Ontario’s economic recovery,” said Allan O’Dette, president and chief exec of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. “The government projects that the ORPP will provide economic benefits to Ontario over the long-term. In the short-term, however, the program will place new costs on employers at a time when their costs are already rising as a result of increasing electricity rates and weakened purchasing power.”
The idea of an Ontario Retirement Pension Plan was initially floated through the provincial Liberal Party at the end of 2013, eventually becoming a major policy plank of Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government. Information on the brand new pension scheme were unveiled last summer.
The ORPP’s goal is to provide additional financial security for Ontario workers when they retire along with what’s already paid out by the Canadian Type of pension, especially being an growth of the second was rejected underneath the former government of Stephen Harper.
But a separate provincial type of pension has come under fire by businesses who say that their costs goes up substantially as a result. The Chamber said Tuesday that several measures could make the plan work while offloading the costs of the ORPP.
Those measures include targeted tax relief, electricity rate reductions in price for businesses, greater local economic development funding and transition support for smaller businesses. The Chamber also known as for modernized private sector pension solvency rules for employers that provide defined benefit pension plans.
The OCC noted that provincial governments make similar accommodations for businesses in the past, such as a number of tax cuts that have been announced in ’09 in front of implementation from the Harmonized Florida sales tax (HST).
