Smith says Alberta 'may have to go to the courts' to get clarity from feds on CPP asset transfer 'number'

OTTAWA — Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she’s losing patience with what she views as the reticence of federal officials to give her a “number” indicating how much in assets Alberta would receive if it were to exit Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and transition to its own provincial fund.

Smith said on her weekly radio show that she raised the long-simmering issue with Prime Minister Mark Carney when the two met earlier this month.

“I told (Carney) that we did not get a satisfactory answer on what the transfer value would be, and we need it. And, so, we’ll see if he provides (an answer),” said Smith.

Smith said Alberta “may have to go to the courts” if it Ottawa continues to withhold this figure.

She added that this figure would be necessary to fulfill a key recommendation of the recently concluded Alberta Next Panel , which was to provide Albertans with a “detailed” breakdown of a hypothetical Alberta Pension Plan before moving forward with a referendum on exiting the CPP.

“The (panel) was pretty clear in saying you can’t go to a referendum of the people until you know that number,” said Smith.

University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe, who sat on the Alberta Next Panel with Smith, said the CPP’s composition as an actively managed fund, with a constantly changing mix of contributors and beneficiaries, makes it virtually impossible to put a price tag on Alberta’s share.

“The is not a single dollar-value number that the federal government could, today, quote to any province looking to leave because the value of the fund changes every single day,” said Tombe.

Tombe added that the required multi-year transition to a provincial pension plan would create additional uncertainty. By law, any province that exits the CPP must give Ottawa three years’ notice and put forward a plan that gives residents comparable benefits.

He said that the best federal officials can do is put forward “an authoritative formula that one could use to calculate the number.”

Tombe himself recently used a formula made public by the Office of the Chief Actuary to calculate this figure at roughly $150 billion, accounting for 20 to 25 per cent of the fund’s total assets.

He added that federal officials could bring some clarity to Alberta’s pension debate by endorsing the Chief Actuary’s formula and promising to stick to it in the event of the province’s exit from the program.

Jack Mintz, a fellow University of Calgary economist who supports Alberta moving to a provincial pension plan, says he disagrees with Tombe and thinks it would be easy for Ottawa to come up with a number.

“One could simply take the split at a particular point of time … or even come up with some sort of forecast,” said Mintz.

Mintz says he suspects federal officials are hesitating to put forward a number because they don’t want to “encourage Alberta to leave the Canada Pension Plan.”

The Alberta Pension Plan was one of six ideas put up for discussion as part of the Alberta Next Panel, a panel aimed at vetting possible questions for the province’s 2026 referendum ballot.

National Post rmohamed@postmedia.com

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