New numbers from the federal Treasury Board indicate that annual MP pensions averaged $81,140 last year.
That’s up 11.4 per cent, compounded over the last two years due to inflation indexing, according to
.
The indexation covers retirement allowances, survivor benefits, and disability pensions based on cost-of-living increases.
1,193 MPs, retirees and family members
in the benefits plan. Payments last year included benefits to 192 widows and orphans.
“A plan member’s benefits are based on the number of years of pensionable service at retirement, where that service was accrued, the age at which they start receiving benefits and whether they retire because of a disability,” states the Treasury Board report.
To get a pension, MPs must serve for at least six years.
of that after losing in the recent federal election. That includes ex-Liberals Han Dong (Don Valley North, ON) and Irek Kusmierczyk (Windsor—Tecumseh, ON), and New Democrats Taylor Bachrach (Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC), Laurel Collins (Victoria), Matthew Green (Hamilton Centre, ON) and Lyndsay Mathyssen (London—Fanshawe, ON).
In 2000, parliament mandated
all MPs to enroll in the pension plan
.
Then in 2005, parliament passed An Act To Amend The Parliament Of Canada Act
mandating automatic annual pay hikes for MPs
based on inflation and a labour department index of wage settlements in the unionized private sector.
Cabinet has
waived the automatic April 1 raises only once,
for three years following the 2008 financial panic.
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