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May 3, 2016

Ottawa’s unfunded liabilities for employee pensions stood at $269 billion at the end of the 2015 fiscal year, far larger than reported, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute study. In “Worse Than It Looks: The True Burden and Risks of Federal Employee Pension Plans,” authors William B.P. Robson and Alexandre Laurin look through the federal government's opaque accounting, and reveal that the unfunded liabilities in federal employee pension plans are almost $118 billion worse than shown on the books.

William Robson

Bill Robson took office as CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute in July 2006, after serving as the Institute’s Senior Vice President since 2003 and Director of Research from 2000 to 2003. He has written more than 270 monographs, articles, chapters and books on such subjects as government budgets, pensions, healthcare financing, inflation and currency issues.

Alexandre Laurin

Alexandre is the Director of Research and leads the fiscal policy program and the pension policy program at the C.D. Howe Institute. He joined the C.D. Howe Institute in 2008 and became Director of Research in 2014. From 1999 to 2008, Mr.