text: It already is the case that if you start taking your pension early, you get a lower annual payment. And let's face it, the people taking it early, like the people who keep working, tend to be from the upper income brackets or to have secure pensions as teachers do. I find it puzzling that we are working with actuarial tables instead of doing the obvious. Canada had an advantage over places like the US, in that the largest age cohort was born between 1955 and 1965. They were in their thirties and forties when Foot's Boom, Bust, Echo came out. Ten years ago it was possible to make defined benefit pensions compulsory for companies over a certain number of employees. Much more of the aged population would have been able to support themselves in the coming years.  Even now, that age cohort has between five and fifteen years to work. The government could sell units in a defined benefit plan as an alternative to RRSPs, with large employer participation required.