The approximately 2.2 million beneficiaries of the Quebec Pension Plan (QPP) will see their pensions increase by 6.5% in 2023, Retraite Quebec announced on Friday.
The pensions of RRQ are indexed each January to take into account variations in Statistics Canada’s consumer price index (CPI), thus protecting its beneficiaries from inflation. The indexing calculation of the RRQ takes into account the annual variation of the average of theIPC Canadian for the period from November to October.
The household current expenditure basket studied by Statistics Canada to establish its IPC looks in particular at the prices of the food, housing, clothing, transport and health care sectors, to compare them with a reference year.
According to this index, a purchase of $100 in goods and services from the 2002 reference basket was worth $153.80 in October 2022, which represented a growth of 53.8% over 20 years.
As a result of the high inflation that has been raging in the country for several months in most consumer sectors, the increase in pensions decreed for 2023 is particularly high compared to those of the last five years, which ranged between 1.0% and 2.0% .7%.
The persons affected by the increase in pensions are the beneficiaries of pensions for retirement, surviving spouse, invalidity, disabled contributor’s child and orphan. These annuities are available to people who have made sufficient contributions to the RRQ or their relatives.