Media coverage about the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP) has been unrelenting for the past two years. The Ontario government has made many announcements setting out its vision for its new, government-run defined benefit pension plan for Ontario employees which will be similar to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).

Are you finding it hard to keep track? Here is an up-to-date guide. More details are in the articles listed at the end of this guide.

When is the ORPP coming into effect?

The Ontario government recently changed the effective dates. It’s likely that the following schedule is final.

Employers who had an active registered pension plan on August 11, 2015, are exempt until January 1, 2020. It doesn’t matter if their existing plan does not currently qualify as “comparable” under the ORPP rules. It doesn’t matter if their existing pension plan doesn’t apply to all of their employees. All of those lucky employers have until January 1, 2020 to decide how to react to the ORPP.

All other employers of Ontario workers will be required to start making contributions to the ORPP on the following dates, unless they adopt a “comparable” registered pension plan:

• January 1, 2018 if more than 50 employees; and
• January 1, 2019 if 50 or fewer employees.

What types of pension plans will qualify as “comparable”? 

The Ontario government has not budged from its position that group registered retirement savings plans do not qualify as “comparable”. It is now certain that Ontario employers who offer only a Group RRSP, deferred profit sharing plan or other type of non-pension savings plan, will have to either change their plans, or join the ORPP.

See the links at the end of this guide for details of what registered pension plans do qualify as “comparable.” Beware: this is not a simple, blanket exemption. Every registered pension plan will have to be closely examined to ensure that it perfectly complies with the details of what the Ontario government deems to be “comparable”. Does your registered pension plan have a waiting period for plan entry or service caps? Are there classes of employees who are not required to join your plan (e.g. certain fixed-term, contract, call-in or other classes of permitted excluded employees)? If the answer is yes, not all of your employees will be members of a “comparable” plan for ORPP purposes. Those employees will need to join the ORPP, while your other employees will not.

The ORPP Administration Corporation will soon start communicating with employers to confirm their enrolment date in the ORPP, and to verify which employers have “comparable” plans and are therefore exempt.

Is the ORPP now law?                        

Yes. In 2015 a very brief piece of legislation was adopted without many specifics. On April 14, 2016 the Ontario government released Bill 186, the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan Act (Strengthening Retirement Security for Ontarians), 2016. It is 50 pages of legislative details about the new regime. More details have been promised in regulations that will be released in the summer of 2016.

Will it go away if the Canada Pension Plan is enhanced?

Don’t count on it. Federal, provincial and territorial finance ministers will be meeting in June of 2016 to discuss possible changes to the CPP. It’s a long and uncertain political road to get to an enhanced CPP. It may never happen. Meanwhile, the Premier of Ontario has repeatedly said that the Ontario government is pressing ahead with the ORPP.

What’s new?                                    

The recent introduction of Bill 186 in the Ontario Legislature (on April 14, 2016), with all of its detailed rules about the ORPP, is exciting for lawyers. Details in the Bill include a regime for enforcement, guidelines for the collection of personal information, unsurprising points about the treatment of pensions earned under the ORPP on marriage breakdown, death, and so on. Many of these details are not new, so the Bill is less exciting for employers.

One interesting new detail in the Bill applies to directors of corporations. If they receive a “stipend or remuneration” for their service as a director, they will be subject to the ORPP unless an exemption applies.

Want more information?

Contact any member of the Dentons Canada pension group, or click on the following links:

• Get ready for the new Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (July 28, 2014)
• Update on the new, mandatory Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (December 9, 2014)
• New details about the ORPP (August 12, 2015)
• ORPP: What’s next now that the election is over (October 26, 2015)
• ORPP: Additional Design Details Released (February 1, 2016)
• ORPP Update: Enrollment and Phase-in of Contributions Delayed (February 19, 2016)

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