Mr. Speaker, in response to (a), in 1996-97, the Canada pension plan, CPP, was able to match 702,000 T4 information tax slips to 590,000 contributor client accounts. At that time, CPP was responsible for roughly 23 million client record of earnings, ROE, accounts to which earnings and CPP contributions were credited.
In response to (b), of the 590,000 contributor client accounts, Service Canada identified 93,000 payments owed to clients who were receiving benefits from the CPP or who had been in receipt of benefits from CPP, but for various reasons were no longer eligible for payments. These “underpayments” totalled $38 million which could be sent to CPP beneficiaries in lump sum payments to enhance their current financial situation. As well, these clients would benefit from an increase in their monthly benefit amount for all future payments from CPP.
In response to (c), this left roughly 43,000 payments to be made to clients who were no longer receiving benefits for various reasons such as the death of a client or the cancellation and suspension of benefits. These payments are referred to as “frozen underpayments” and the total dollar value associated to them was approximately $11 million. The frozen underpayments were handled in three phases. Phase one saw the release of 3,741 frozen underpayments to clients who were still alive. Phase two saw the release of an additional 16,148 frozen underpayments to a deceased client’s surviving spouse or child/children. The value of frozen underpayments for phase one and phase two totalled approximately $5 million. Phase three consisted of the remaining 23,000 frozen underpayments totalling approximately $6 million which belonged to clients who were deceased and had no recorded surviving spouse or child/children. CPP was unable to release any of these frozen underpayments.
In response to (d), since this project, CPP has worked hard over the years to identify clients, or their next of kin who were eligible for these frozen underpayments. We were able to release 16,148 frozen underpayments to adeceased client’s surviving spouse or child/children. There are 23,000 frozen underpayments remaining that cannot be paid as the client is deceased and has no surviving spouse or child/children. If a client was alive at the time of the project, but is now deceased in 2008, then this client’s account would have been adjusted at the onset of the project and thus they would have received a statement of contributions informing them of their eligibility to benefits. In an effort to advise clients of their possible eligibility to all CPP benefits, the Canada pension plan has sent a total of 22.4 million CPP statements of contributions to clients of all ages in 2000-01, encouraging them to view their personal information and contact CPP if corrections are required. This method of contacting clients continues today.
In response to (e), as the majority of the clients affected at the time were not yet in receipt of benefits--still contributing to the plan--their accounts were updated and, in 2000, they were sent a statement of contributions advising them of their benefit eligibility. For the people who were in receipt of benefits at the time, they received an increase in their benefit and an underpayment of benefits with a letter of explanation. As for the payments to people who were no longer receiving benefits, letters were sent to them and payments were released. In the case of a deceased beneficiary, letters were sent to their surviving spouses or child/children advising them of moneys owed to the deceased beneficiary.
The Government of Canada wants everyone to receive the benefits for which they are entitled. Each year, the government proactively informs millions of Canadians about their entitlement to CPP, old age security and guaranteed income supplement benefits through annual mailings of T4A(P) information slips and statements of contributions, to name a few. These mailings provide contact information to clients should they have any questions about their benefits or the information on their statements.
In response to (f), as of December 2007, there were four million T4 slips with a total CPP contribution dollar value of $104 million which we continue to release to client accounts through various projects and individual client queries. Given that this represents less than 0.05% of the total contributions to the Canada pension plan since 1966, the accuracy of all client CPP record of earnings accounts is ascertained at 99.95%.
