Chief actuary disagrees with Alberta government belief of entitlement to more than half of CPP

The chief actuary's position paper, posted online on Friday, comes to a similar conclusion as University of Calgary economics professor Trevor Tombe. Last year, Tombe calculated that Alberta would be entitled to between 20 and 25 per cent of the $575-billion plan.

"It is a clear rejection of the government's 53 per cent claim that has been quite prominently touted now for some time," said Tombe, who is the director of fiscal and economic policy at the university's School of Public Policy.

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Tombe says LifeWorks derived that estimate by assuming Albertans would be entitled to as much interest as if it had created an independent provincial pension plan in 1966 — when the CPP began — and watched interest accrue.

The chief actuary, Assia Billig, disagreed with the LifeWorks interpretation. Her position paper says the federal law governing the CPP must be interpreted as if all provinces could withdraw from the plan at the same time and take their share.

Yah, up until fairly recently, CPP was a general revenue sinkhole and wouldn't have approached inflation growth, let alone actual interest rates over that time. The federal government has been underfunding CPP up until when they started to put the premiums into actual assets in the early 2000s. So you can probably just assume there was nothing there prior to then.