There are many reasons for starting Canada Pension Plan payments as early as age 60 but only a few of them are good reasons, financial planners say. And there are even fewer good reasons for starting CPP early while you're still working and contributing to the plan. In spite of that, according to government statistics, there were 658,000 CPP beneficiaries who worked and contributed to a post retirement benefit in 2018, which they received in 2019. That's about 12.6 per cent of the 5.2 million CPP beneficiaries.