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Retired actuary and pensions expert Malcolm Hamilton once quipped that senior couples who “never worked a day in their lives or saved a dime” can receive more than $20,000 a year from Ottawa. In 2014, that figure is now $25,360 in combined OAS and GIS benefits, most of it tax-free, while a single senior qualifying for maximum OAS and GIS, according to the government, receives $6,677 OAS and $9,053 GIS, for a total of $15,730.

And as Morneau Shepell chief actuary Fred Vettese revealed, even affluent Canadians could collect GIS for three years between 67 and 70 by postponing when they collect their employer pensions, CPP benefits and RRSP income until age 70 — while drawing on a TFSA account to maintain lifestyle.

To implement Vettese’s strategy, Hamilton says a family would need to get its taxable income down to zero for three straight years: “no interest, capital gains, rents, employment income (even deferred payments from earlier periods of employment), or pensions other than OAS and GIS.”

One Department of Finance official speaking on background said he thinks this would rarely be possible. Most high-income individuals have other income sources and would inevitably render them ineligible for GIS. And since TFSAs have only been around five years and so remain mostly small, “this might be too hypothetical to comment on, given that the purported optimal scenario is decades away,” he said.

Still, Hamilton points out that the gambit does show “how fractured and incoherent our retirement system has become. Governments keep adding program after program, each piled absurdly one on top of another, until eventually only a genius can figure out how to navigate the retirement system.”