Bill Morneau was working in his seventh-floor office at Morneau Shepell's Don Mills Road headquarters when his colleague, Fred Vettese stopped by the door.

It was December of 2011, and the chief actuary of the Toronto-based retirement consulting firm had been reading the latest wave of news stories warning of a looming pension crisis.

"This is ridiculous," Mr. Vettese recalls telling Mr. Morneau, who was executive chairman of the company at the time. "'We should write a book to set the record straight.' And to my amazement, he said: 'Yeah. Let's do it.'"

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The resulting book – The Real Retirement – surfaced a year later. It delivered a direct attack on "fear-mongering media stories" and "overblown" warnings that Canadians aren't saving enough. The co-authors argued that the data shows seniors poverty has never been lower and most Canadians will have more than enough in retirement. The book also praised the Conservative government's decision to raise the age of eligibility for the Old Age Security government-funded pension from 65 to 67. The book touched briefly on proposals to expand the Canada Pension Plan, expressing concern that "we would be putting too many eggs in one basket."

That was then. Now, Mr. Morneau is the federal Minister of Finance. He has reversed the Conservatives' changes to OAS and called them "draconian," citing a lack of consultation on the change. On Monday, he will convene his provincial colleagues for a summit in Vancouver on how to expand the CPP.

To some, Mr. Morneau's current push contradicts the views he expressed before entering politics. In a brief interview Friday, the minister rejected those suggestions.

"In my view, it's an entirely consistent trajectory," he said, explaining that the evidence gathered for the book and from a career working in the pension field led him to the conclusion that an expansion is required. He said the book was an attempt to push back at overheated rhetoric in the pension debate.

"I spent an entire professional life witnessing the decline of workplace pension plans," said Mr. Morneau, who has been working the phones for weeks in an effort to reach a deal Monday.

Mr. Vettese, his co-author, agreed that it is not inconsistent to play down concerns while also saying that a modest CPP enhancement would help address the fact that some Canadians aren't saving enough.

"The way I reconcile that is, yeah, we did say there's no crisis, but we did say it's going to be tougher in the future," he said. "We're not going to get the same kind of housing wealth buildup. Interest rates aren't going to be as robust. Investment returns aren't going to be as good as they were. We are living longer. There's all kind of reasons as to why things aren't going to be as good in future and so that's why a modest increase in the CPP would kind of make up for that, and that's why it makes some sense to be doing it and I'm onside with that."

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The challenge Mr. Morneau and the provincial ministers face is to reach a conclusion that fits with the evidence. Numerous policy papers have argued that there is no broad-based savings problem, but pockets of the population – particularly middle-income Canadians who do not have workplace pensions – are not on track to maintain their current lifestyles in retirement.

Critics of an expanded CPP – including the Conservative Party and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business – say Mr. Morneau should take his own advice.

During a recent late-night session in the House of Commons, Conservative MPs peppered Mr. Morneau with quotes from his book. Mr. Morneau responded that the savings debate is "nuanced" and that an increasing number of Canadians are not saving enough for retirement.

Conservative finance critic Lisa Raitt chided the minister for trying to "distance himself from his previous good ideas."

Hassan Yussuff, the President of the Canadian Labour Congress, has been urging finance ministers to expand the CPP since they first began to discuss the issue seriously in 2009.

Changing the CPP requires the support of Ottawa and seven of the 10 provinces representing two-thirds of the population. At times, a deal appeared to be at hand only to see a shift in the provincial math as various governments altered their positions.

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Mr. Yussuff said he has been speaking regularly with Mr. Morneau and provincial ministers in the runup to Monday's meeting and believes the federal minister's deep pension expertise will help him reach a deal.

"If there's anybody in the government who understands pensions and long-term obligations and solvency and all this, it's Bill Morneau," he said. "For the discussions I've been having with him on this particular file, he's been stellar. First of all, he understands the need to reach a consensus. He understands the need to have a balanced approach. I think because he knows pensions so well, he's in the best position to convince his counterparts."