The Canada Pension Plan[41] (“CPP”) requires a division of credits upon marriage breakdown, with credits earned during the marriage being divided equally between the spouses. While the CPP allows spouses to agree that the credits not be divided where a provincial statute expressly permits such agreements, Ontario has not enacted permissive legislation. This has led to a difficulty, at least in theory, in that CPP credits would appear to fall within the FLA definition of “family property”, making them subject to that Act’s equalization regime even though they are also subject to mandatory division under the federal statute. It appears that the difficulty is largely ignored in practice, with CPP credits simply being omitted from the calculation of net family property[42]. Nevertheless, this does raise the question of whether Ontario should enact legislation expressly excluding such credits from net family property[43], or at least allowing the parties to agree that they not be divided under the CPP[44].
