Pensions: A Primer for Lawyers

This paper has two objectives: first to describe the elements of a pension plan and, secondly, to illustrate the disproportion between the employee's stake in a pension and his control over the pension plan. The paper is concerned only with private pension plans, which covered over one-third of the Canadian work force in 1970.1 It must be borne in mind, however, that many pensioned employees, for example, seventy percent in Nova Scotia, belong to public plans. Ontario, Alberta, Quebec, Saskatchewan and the Dominion have enacted minimum standards for private pension plans. As the statutes are substantially identical, this paper refers only to the Federal Pension Benefits Standards Act,3 which applies to undertakings in the federal jurisdiction. The pensions of Nova Scotians not in the federal jurisdiction are regulated only by the Income Tax Act, 4 which specifies the standards required of pension plans for the deduction from "income" of the contributions to, and the income of, pension funds. The Income Tax Act's requirements for registration of a "pension plan" are noted throughout the paper. The prerequisites for registration of a Registered Retirement Savings Plan and a Deferred Profit Sharing Plan are outlined in Appendix A.