Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan

A pension plan has existed for Ontario teachers since 1917. Today, the plan’s members include 175,000 teachers in elementary and secondary schools in Ontario, 114,000 pensioners, and 69,000 inactive members. The plan has one of Canada’s largest payrolls with $4.4 billion in benefits paid to plan members, and $2.7 billion received in total contributions from teachers, the provincial government and designated employers in 2009.

Before 1990, the plan was administered by the Ontario government and restricted to investing in non-marketable Province of Ontario debentures. In 1990, the government established the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board as a corporation overseen by a nine-member board.

With $96.4 billion in net assets at December 31, 2009, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (Teachers’) is the largest single-profession pension plan in Canada. An independent organization, it invests the pension fund’s assets and administers the pensions of 289,000 active and retired teachers in Ontario.