Canadian Companies Used to Pay Workers Pensions — So Why Did They Stop?

Subscribe to the channel    / @dominionnotes   In October 1925, an old man took his last pay envelope at a New Brunswick sawmill. Nothing else was coming. Within two generations, millions of Canadians were promised a pension for life. So who decided that promise should end, and what did it leave on your shoulders? Before any of that, old age meant a grown child's spare bed or the county poor farm. The government pension, when it came, started at 70, and you had to prove you were poor enough to receive it. Behind the first company pensions stood the great railways. In the summer of 1910, the men of the Grand Trunk went on strike and learned exactly what their pensions depended on. Then came a war, a wave of union contracts, an Ontario law in 1963, and Judy LaMarsh steering the Canada Pension Plan through Parliament. On one side were the workers who believed the money was theirs. On the other were the people who wrote the plan documents. Why it ended is simpler than you might think. If you have a workplace retirement plan, the end of this story is printed on your statement. Your paycheque, your mortgage and your pension all started somewhere. Dominion Notes tells those stories. Subscribe if you'd like to hear the rest. #CanadianHistory #CanadianPensions #historyofmoney