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HERE’S WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU

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More on the Canada Pension Plan

By JACK PHILLIPS
(Second and final article)

The Canada Pension Plan pro-
vides for pensions to all widows
caring for their dependent chil-
dren and to others if they are
widowed at age 35 or older, This
Pension will have two parts: a
flat-rate pension, which at the
beginning will be $25 a month,
and an earnings related pension
which will be 373 percent of what
the husband’s retirement pension
would have been, These amounts
will be reduced for women with-
Out dependent children who are
under 45 when their husbands
die,

A flat-rate benefit of $25 a
month will be paid to the children
of the deceased, until they reach
the age of 18, or 25 if attending
School,

This, if the husbands earning-

_ Yelated pension would have been

$100 a month, the widow with two
dependent children would receive
$25 plus $37.50 plus $50a month,
for a total of $112.50, Total pay-
Ments to the children of one con-
tributor cannot exceed the maxi-
mum retirement pension payable,

Disabled contributors will re-
Ceive a flat-rate pension of $25
a month, plus 75 percent of what
the earnings - related pension
Would have been,

A benefit will be paid when a
Contributor or pensioner dies,

This 1ltffip-sum payment will
amount to six times the monthly
payment that could have been
paid, but will not exceed $500 in
the beginning,

Financing

As stated in the previous
article, the first $600 of earnings
will be exempt from contribu-
tions, On all-earnings above that,
and up to the initial ceiling of
$5,000, the employee will pay
1,8 percent of earnings and the
employer will pay a like amount,
This means that workers with
relatively low earnings will make
a smaller contribution for each
dollar of pension to which they
become entitled, than will people
of higher incomes,

For example, aworker earning
$1,000 a year will pay $7.20 a
year, or 0.7 percent of earnings,
The worker earning $5,000 a year
will make the maximum annual
contribution of $79.20, which is
1,6 percent of earnings, On earn-
ings of $3,600 a year the worker’s

-contribution will be 1,5 percent,

The monthly employee contri-
butions will be as follows:

EARNING CONT RIBUTION
$T00is:° a month. aye 5-2 290
$200 @aanonth®, 2) .0ces on eet
$300 a mMOnth, is .e e  4000
$400 a-month feo =4 2. 0050.

$416.67 a month (or more) 6.60

Contributions will start at age

do about 24.”

“This 40-hour week has got me worried; I only usually

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18 and will stop when a pension
begins, which may be between
65 and 70, but inno case later than
70. Pensions will be taxable, like
other incomes, but contributions
will be deductible from income
subject to tax,

The C,P,P, provides for a cost-
of-living increase in earnings-
related pensions, disability pen-
sions, widows’ pensions and or-
phans’ benefits, Cost-of-living
increases will be based on the
Consumer Price Index, Increases
of less than one percent will not
be taken into account, The maxi-~
mum will be two percent, Should
prices decline in any year, pen-
sions will not be reduced, This
cost of living feature will also
be applied to the Old AgeSecurity
Allowance (maximum allowance
$75 a month at 70),

Benefit

The earnings - related pension
will be based on the man’s aver-
age earnings, over his entire
period of contributions, The
$5,000 ceiling will apply for the
first two years of the plan, Dur-
ing the next eight years of the
transition period, the cost-of-
living factor will be applied, After
the ten-year transitional period,
the ceiling of $5,000 will be
raised in line with a long-term
moving average of wages and
salaries, :

In calculating a man’s average
earnings, his wages or salary.
for, say, 1972, will be adjusted
by the percentage relationship
between the average earnings
ceiling in the three years before
retirement and the ceiling for
1972. This will be done for each
year of contributions, In this
manner, past earnings will be
brought up totheir current equiv-
alent before the average earnings
figure is arrived at,

The man who does not contri-
bute for some years will get a
smaller pension than if he had
contributed all the time. How-
ever, there is a provision to
assist people who. because of
sickness or unemployment, have
abnormally low earnings in some
years, It will be permissible to
deduct 10 percent of their actual
or possible contribution years
from the average earnings cal-
culations, Also, for each year that
a man works after 65 he will be
able to exclude another low year,

e

Conclusions

According to the actuaries,
larger contributions will be
necessary in the future, In the
first ten years of the plan, con-
tributions will be much greater
than the cost of pensions, In the
following ten years, pension costs
will rise sharply, The experts
say that unless the rate of con-

Communist gains

By PHYLLIS ROSNER

ROME— Winning more votes in
the Nov. 22 local and provincial
council elections than ever be-
fore, Italian Communists have
scored a great victory, Their vote
is up from 24,7 percent (1960)
to 26 percent.

The Communist Party wonthis
victory despite a virulent anti-
Communist and anti-Soviet cam-
paign in the press and on radio
and TV,

Seen as a whole the elections
have brought with them a new
swing to the Left. It is true that
the Nenni Socialists have lost
629,000 votes (2,9 percent) inthe
elections, But this loss is more
than covered by the gains of the
Communists and the 737,079
votes cast for the newly formed
Left Wing Socialist Party, the
PSIUP,

The Nenni decline is matched
by that of the Christian Demo-
crats, who are down by three
percent in 74o0fthe principal pro-
vincial councils. The monarch-
ists and neo-fascists also show
a shrinkage. The trend is the
same in the voting for the 6,700-
odd new local councils. The Com-
munists have gained and the Nenni
Socialists and Christian Demo-
crats have lost,

Particularly impressive are
the Communist successes in Cen-
tral and Northern Italy, where
they were already strong, In
Genoa they won 40,000 more votes
than in 1960, and another four
city council seats, while the
Christian Democrats lost five.

In Turinthe Communists gained
between two and three percent
and in Rome—traditionally Right
Wing — they won over 100,000
more votes, increasing their poll
from 24,6 to 27 percent,

In *Red*® Tuscany the Com-

munists did especially well, as
also in Emilia and Reggio Emilia
(in Bologna they won 44 percent
of the vote, with 11,000 more
votes than in 1960),

In Naples, Communists in-
creased the number of their city
councillors from 17 to 20, but
in Sicily, where only local coun-
cil elections were held, they suf-
fered losses,

tributions will go up inthe second
ten years. the fund will even-
tually go broke,

However. a lot can happen in
two decades, Disarmament and
the extension of social owner-
ship could provide large sums
of social capital. This capital
could take over part or all of
the cost of providing pensions, In
socialist countries. pensions are
provided without deductions from
the pay cheque,

It appears that the Canada Pen-
sion Plan will become law, It
also appears that before long we
will have national, comprehen-
‘sive health insurance, This dem-
onstrates two things, First. that
we live in a changing world and
that no Canadian government can
long avoid passing such legis-
lation. Second, that the minority,
Liberal government is seeking to
consolidate and extend its sup-
port from the people,

Bill C-136, the pension bill,
has 85 printed pages and 124
sections, All that we have given
you in these two articles is a
brief summary and a few con-
clusions, So, if you have any ques-
tions about the Canada Pension
Plan, please send a letter to
PENSION PANEL, PACIFIC
TRIBUNE, Room 6, 425 Main
Street, Vancouver 4, B,C,

in Italy

One of the key questions now
is that of the composition of the
councils: hitherto over 2,000 have
had joint Socialist - Communist
administrations,

Last weekend’s vote makes it
more-than ever necessary for the
Nenni Socialists to collaborate
with the Communists and the
Left Wing Socialists,

1425 SUBS IN

~ Next week:
Sub Drive Results

Our Circulation Drive ended officially on November
30, at which time we had received 1425 subs in re-
newals, new readers and bundle sales.
were to have printed the final results.

. We were prevented from doing so by two factors.

First, this is our last issue before voters all over B.C.
go to the polls to choose their local representatives and,
as can be seen by scanning its pages, we devoted a lot
of space fo this vital field of politics—leaving us a little
crowded in the space department.

Secondly, several clubs are within one or two subs
of reaching their quotas. They requested we hold off pub-
lishing the final results until they are able to go over the
top—which will be very shortly.

Because of these twin factors our editorial staff de-
cided to hold off printing the final drive results until next
week. This will give all clubs who genuinely desire to
reach their quotas an opportunity of doing just that by
collecting some of the 250 renewals not picked up as yet.
It will also give delinquent areas a chance to better their
standing—sort of a temporary reprieve.

We suggest it be put to good use.

Next week—the moment of truth.

In this issue we

December 4, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 11