The Benefit Everyone Gets and Few People Understand

Old Age Security is the retirement benefit Canadians are most sure they understand and least likely to have read about. Most people know it starts at 65 and that it is “small.” Fewer know that it is earned by residence rather than contributions, that you can be paid more for waiting, that high earners hand part of it back through the tax return, that it can stop 6 months after you leave the country, or that it has no survivor benefit at all.

My thesis is simple. OAS looks like the easiest piece of the Canadian retirement system, but the three decisions that move real money (whether to delay it, how to keep the clawback from eating it, and whether it follows you abroad) each depend on rules most people have never read. A fourth question has now joined them: whether the income thresholds that trigger the clawback will come down. That is a live policy debate, and anyone with a six-figure retirement income should have a view on how exposed they are.

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