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CELPIP Practice Reading: Reading for Viewpoints ID: #60215 Medium No Exit From the Pension Fund

Read the following editorial from a website.

Every other week, a slice of nearly every Canadian pay cheque goes into the CPP, the national pension plan, and employers put in a matching amount. A group of business owners and some younger workers now want the right to opt out and invest that money themselves. We disagree. In our view, a plan that everyone pays into is the reason the fund can promise steady payments for life, and we believe it should stay mandatory. But the critics are right about one thing: the plan gives the least to those who need it most.

Lysander Verhoeven, spokesperson for a federation of small businesses, argues that the employer share is a heavy cost for firms with thin margins. He says owners would hire more staff if they could skip the payments, and that workers should be free to choose their own savings. Adaeze Voyer, a pension actuary, warns that an opt-out would drain the fund of its steadiest members. When young, healthy earners leave, she explains, the plan must either cut benefits or raise contributions for everyone who stays.

Chidi Weatherby, who runs an anti-poverty group in Winnipeg, says the opt-out debate ignores a bigger problem. Because payments are based on lifetime earnings, a cleaner or cashier who earned little receives a small pension, even after decades of work. He wants Ottawa to raise the federal income supplement for low-income seniors rather than change the plan itself. Viveka Winslow, a labour economist, notes that part-time workers are usually left out of workplace pension plans altogether. Someone holding two part-time jobs, she adds, may work full-time hours and still have only the public plan to rely on.

Verhoeven is right that the costs are real for small firms, and we do not dismiss them, but letting people leave would weaken the plan for all of us. We recommend that Ottawa keep contributions mandatory, raise that supplement as Weatherby proposes, and require workplace plans to accept workers with two part-time jobs. A pension system should work hardest for the people who have the least room to save.

Using the drop-down menu (▾), choose the best option according to the information given on the website.

This editorial is mainly about 1.
.

Who most clearly warns that an opt-out would weaken the fund for those who remain? 2.
.

Viveka Winslow’s position would most likely be supported by 3.
.

What outcome does Chidi Weatherby’s proposal call for? 4.
.

The editorial’s attitude toward the opt-out critics is best described as 5.
.

The following is a comment by a visitor to the website page. Complete the comment by choosing the best option to fill in each blank.

My parents ran a two-person bakery for thirty years, so I know how the employer share bites in a slow month. Even so, I cannot follow Lysander Verhoeven when he claims owners would 6.
 if the payments stopped, because ours would simply have kept the money. Back then my parents had to add 7.
 to each worker’s contribution, and the bookkeeping never got easier. Chidi Weatherby, who 8.
, makes the argument I found most moving. I also had not realized that the opt-out push comes from business owners and 9.
, according to your first paragraph. Your closing line about working hardest for 10.
 is the one I will remember.

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