How the amount is worked out

The pension is a fraction: your years of residence in Canada over forty. Two rules in the Act change what that fraction comes to, and one of them is permanent — the fraction is fixed on the day your application is approved and later residence cannot raise it.

This section explains the rules, not the current amounts

Every rule and every figure on this page is read from one primary source: the Old Age Security Act (R.S.C. 1985, c. O-9), as consolidated on the Justice Laws Website and retrieved on 12 August 2026. Each figure below carries the section it was read from.

What you will not find here is a current payment amount. The Act sets out how the pension is worked out, but the dollar figure it prints is the one enacted for the first quarter of 1985, kept in the statute as the base a quarterly adjustment has run on ever since. The amount actually paid is published by Service Canada and appears in no legislation. Check it there, or in your My Service Canada Account, which is the only place that reflects your own record.

These rules have not been through this site’s own review and sign-off. Do not rely on them for an application or a financial decision: read the cited section, or speak to Service Canada.

A fraction of forty

A partial pension is worked out as a straight proportion — your residence years over 40. The Act states it like this:

the amount of a partial monthly pension, for any month, shall bear the same relation to the amount of the full monthly pension for that month as the aggregate period that the applicant has resided in Canada after attaining 18 years of age and before the day on which the application is approved, determined in accordance with subsection (4), bears to 40 years
Old Age Security Act, s 3(3)

The rounding, which is not in your favour

The numerator is rounded down to a whole year before the fraction is worked out. Nineteen years and eleven months is nineteen 40ths, not nineteen-and-eleven-twelfths of one.

For the purpose of calculating the amount of a partial monthly pension under subsection (3), the aggregate period described in that subsection shall be rounded to the lower multiple of a year when it is not a multiple of a year.
Old Age Security Act, s 3(4)

The rules that change what the fraction is worth

Five further rules move the amount without touching the fraction, and the first of them is permanent — it is the reason the date you apply matters as much as the years you have.

Once an application for a partial monthly pension has been approved, the amount may not be increased on the basis of subsequent periods of residence in Canada. The fraction is fixed at approval, so applying early with 22 years locks in 22/40ths permanently.
Old Age Security Act s 3(5)
Applying after becoming qualified increases the pension by 0.6% for each month between qualifying and approval. The Act states the rate and no maximum period.
Old Age Security Act s 7.1(1), (2)
A person qualified to receive a pension receives, unless they decide otherwise, the GREATEST of the deferred full pension, the deferred partial pension and the undeferred amount — the election is resolved in the claimant’s favour by default.
Old Age Security Act s 7.1(3)
From the payment quarter commencing 1 July 2022, the full monthly pension is increased by 10% for the period beginning the month after a person turns 75.
Old Age Security Act s 7(5)
The amount payable in a quarter may not be less than the amount payable in the three months before it, whatever the Consumer Price Index does.
Old Age Security Act s 7(3)

Two of those are worth restating plainly. Deferring adds 0.6% a month, and the Act sets no limit on how long you may defer — the commonly-quoted stopping point is not in its text, so this page does not state one. And the pension rises by 10% from the month after you turn 75.

The one to read twice is the first: once a partial pension is approved, later residence in Canada cannot raise it. The fraction is fixed on that day. Applying as soon as you qualify locks in the fraction you have at that moment, permanently.

What the fraction is a fraction of

This page does not calculate a pension amount. The fraction is fully sourced — your years of residence over forty, rounded down to a whole year — but the full monthly pension it is a fraction OF is a quarterly-indexed figure published by Service Canada that this build could not source. A calculator could work out your fraction and still not tell you what it is worth.

This is not the amount paid today

The amount in s 7(1) is the figure enacted for the payment quarter commencing 1 January 1985. It is the base a quarterly adjustment has run on for forty years, and it is NOT the amount payable today. The figure actually paid is published by Service Canada and appears in no legislation; it could not be retrieved when this page was built, because the Government of Canada site would not respond.

Full monthly pension — as enacted for the quarter commencing 1 January 1985

Old Age Security Act (R.S.C. 1985, c. O-9), s 7(1)

$273.80

per month, for a month in the payment quarter commencing 1 January 1985