Wandering around the Internet a bit, it looks like the cheapest option for disposing of a body in Canada today is basic cremation (no funeral service, no urn, no coffin, no enbalming). Even that runs to around $2000, with some variation between funeral homes. If the CPP death benefit is $2500 before taxes, it might barely cover that, although I expect it would be tight. The major costs are the actual use of the crematorium (~40% of the cost on its own), paying funeral home staff to transport and refrigerate the body, and costs associated with legal documentation.

If you want to bury instead of burn, the cost baloons because cemetary plots and the services cemetaries require you to buy to make use of them are ridiculously expensive. Maybe what we need is a return to the pauper’s field—$20 plots, no landscaping, and you dig your own hole (with maybe a quick check from someone official to make sure it’s deep enough for sanitary purposes), transport the corpse in whatever vehicle is available, have anyone willing say a few words, get family or friends to help you lower the unfinished softwood crate-coffin, and add whatever marker you can afford after you fill the hole back in. You know, like poor people used to do up until a hundred or so years ago. You’ll still need the body refrigeration, and the documentation, but it should be possible to get the costs down by considerable if we focus more on the necessary and less on the pretty and on overpriced “respect” for a deceased who, by definition, cannot be aware of it.

For now, though, set aside some money specifically to pay for disposing of your body, if you can. You heirs will thank you for it.