Updated Checked by the Tax-Services.ca editorial team How we check
Demographic shifts in Canada are mostly one story: the country is getting older. For accounting that means bigger pension questions and steady payroll costs. Statistics Canada puts the share of people aged 65 and over at 19.5% in 2025, and every scenario it published goes higher by 2075.
How fast is the population aging?
Statistics Canada’s January 2026 projections give a range, not a single answer. The share aged 65 and over reaches 22.6% in 2075 under the slow-aging scenario and 32.5% under the fast one. The median age, 41.8 in 2025, climbs to between 43.4 and 50.5.
If you want one group to watch for costs, pick people aged 85 and over. It was 951,833 people in 2025, and the projections put it between 3.3 million and 4.2 million by 2075. The agency adds that the rise in the 65 and over share is less sharp after 2030, once all baby boomers have reached that age.
| Measure | 2025 | 2075 range |
|---|---|---|
| Share aged 65 and over | 19.5% | 22.6% to 32.5% |
| Median age | 41.8 | 43.4 to 50.5 |
| People aged 85 and over | 951,833 | 3.3 million to 4.2 million |
What does it do to pension accounting?
The Chief Actuary’s 32nd report on the Canada Pension Plan expects base CPP retirement beneficiaries to rise from 6.4 million in 2025 to 9.5 million in 2050. It also says the 9.9% legislated contribution rate is enough to fund the base plan over the long term. So the public plan is reported as sustainable, even with the pressure.
A private employer’s own pension plan is another matter. Its liability depends on assumptions about how long members live, and every extra year of life adds to it. The pension accounting standards themselves aren’t covered on this page, so ask whoever prepares your statements which assumptions they use and when they last changed.
What does an older workforce cost an employer?
The employer’s CPP and EI share sits on top of every wage, and it’s easy to forget. On a $3,000 biweekly wage in the payroll remittance calculator, the employer adds $228.41 a pay period: $167.94 for CPP and $60.47 for EI. Those aren’t demographic effects. They’re the floor, and anything that raises wages to keep or attract workers lifts them with it.
Workers also choose when to start CPP, and that changes what they live on. The CPP calculator shows a rough $858.34 a month at 65, about 36% less at 60 and 42% more at 70, and it says the 2026 maximum at 65 is $1,507.65.
Put numbers on it. A 36% cut from $858.34 leaves about $549 a month, and a 42% bump takes it to about $1,219. That’s a gap of roughly $670 a month between starting at 60 and waiting until 70, for the same person. It’s the sort of number a long-serving employee will ask you about when they’re thinking of retiring.
What should households and owners look at?
If you’re near retirement yourself, start with the income side. OAS is $751.97 a month at the full rate in the OAS calculator, and you repay 15% of net income above $95,323 in the current range. A business owner planning to sell and retire should run the numbers on the retirement income tax calculator first, since it shows what’s left after tax, not before.
For a company with staff nearing retirement, three questions help. Who covers their work, what does it cost to replace them, and does any pension promise sit on the books? A plain list in a spreadsheet beats a long report.
What about a small business with a few older employees?
Picture a four-person machine shop in Sudbury where two of the employees are in their sixties. Nothing in the tax rules changes because of their age. What changes is the planning. Someone will retire in the next five years, a replacement takes months to train, and the shop’s payroll cost will stay the same or climb while it overlaps the two. It’s cheap to model that overlap on a spreadsheet and costly to discover it in the middle of a busy season. A few bucks of planning now saves a scramble later.
Mistakes and limits
Don’t read a 2075 number as your problem. Population projections aren’t forecasts. They’re scenarios built on assumptions about births, deaths and immigration, which is why the 2075 numbers span such a wide range. Read the ends of the range as bounds, not as predictions.
Nor can a general page say how any one firm is affected. No official page gives accounting rules keyed to age groups, so none are claimed. The figures above are calculator outputs and public projections, and the calculators use a simplified profile.
Where this information comes from
Population figures come from Statistics Canada‘s 2025 to 2075 projections released 27 January 2026. CPP beneficiary counts and the contribution rate come from the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, 32nd actuarial report, with data as at 31 December 2024. This is an independent site, and no government body is behind it.
Frequently asked questions
How much older will Canada get?
Statistics Canada projects people aged 65 and over at 19.5% of the population in 2025, rising to between 22.6% and 32.5% by 2075 depending on the scenario.
Is the Canada Pension Plan still sustainable?
The Chief Actuary's 32nd report says the 9.9% legislated contribution rate is enough to fund the base plan over the long term, with data as at 31 December 2024.
How many people will draw CPP retirement benefits?
The same report projects base CPP retirement beneficiaries rising from 6.4 million in 2025 to 9.5 million in 2050.
What does an employer pay on top of wages?
On a $3,000 biweekly wage, our payroll tool shows $228.41 a pay period: $167.94 CPP and $60.47 EI.
Are population projections reliable for planning?
They're scenarios, not forecasts. Use the range, and expect the far years to move as new data arrives.
- Self-employed taxes in Canada: income, CPP and GST
How tax works when you are self-employed in Canada: reporting income and expenses, paying both halves of CPP, instalments and when to register for GST