Are you familiar with the disability pension under the Québec Pension Plan?

Has your state of health permanently deteriorated to the point where you are unable to work? Did you know you could be entitled to disability benefits? Since its creation, the Québec Pension Plan (QPP) provides Québec employees, as well as their families, with basic income in retirement in the event of death, but also in the event of permanent disability.

Disability benefits include:

• a pension for a disabled person
• a pension for a disabled person's child or children
• an additional amount for disability for retirees that become disabled.

If you have made sufficient contributions to the QPP and you meet the eligibility requirements, you and your family could be entitled to one of these various benefits.

As for all benefits offered by the QPP, disability benefits are indexed annually and taxable. The amount varies based on the number of years during which you made contributions. In 2022, the monthly amount can reach $1463.83.

The fact that an insurance company or other agency considers you to be disabled does not automatically entitle you to a disability pension under the Québec Pension Plan. Retraite Québec will carry out its own medical assessment, and the criteria may be different.

A more generous and better adapted financial protection

Since 1 January 2022, financial protection for disabled persons age 60 or over offered by the QPP has been improved to better reflect their reality. New measures were implemented in order to:

• enhance the benefits offered
• provide more flexible eligibility rules for these benefits
• offer greater flexibility to disabled workers.

A more generous retirement pension in 2022

More than 70 000 retirees who benefited from the disability pension between ages 60 and 65 will have their pension amount enhanced retroactively to 1 January 2022. We estimate that, for a person who began receiving his or her disability pension before age 60, the adjustment of the retirement pension represents an increase between 17.1% and 18.8% of his or her monthly pension.

Increased accessibility to the labour market in 2022

To help disabled persons keep their employment or return to work, the rules were made more flexible regarding the amount of authorized employment earnings to become eligible or to maintain their eligibility for a disability pension. The authorized annual employment earnings have been increased and are now $19 656, regardless of the distribution of the earnings throughout the year.

A more advantageous calculation in 2024

To enhance the financial protection offered to disabled persons aged 60 to 64, the total benefit that can be paid to these person will be increased. The increase could reach 2.5% for persons for whom the disability began before age 60 and for whom the employment earnings are around $30 000. This change will come into effect on 1 January 2024.

For more information: Disability and the Québec Pension Plan