The National Institute on Ageing at Toronto Metropolitan University is recognizing Canadian pension industry mainstay Bob Baldwin with its inaugural lifetime achievement award.
An expert in retirement income with more than 30 years of experience, Baldwin has held many roles in the pension sector, including chair of the C.D. Howe Institute’s pension policy council, director at Addenda Capital and Tradex Management Inc., chair of the board of trustees of the Canada Wide Industrial Pension Plan, advisor to the Global Risk Institute’s National Pension Hub and a member of the expert panel on income security of the Ottawa Council on Aging.
Read: Bob Baldwin appointed chair of C.D. Howe pension policy council
“Bob’s always been trying to bring people together,” says Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, director of financial security research for the NIA. “He’s always been volunteering and has contributed a lot to research. He’s somebody who’s actually has been trying to fill in these gaps as an individual and really taking that leadership role.”
The award was announced in conjunction with the launch of the NIA’s Pension Centre of Excellence, a project that has been a decade in the making and which aims to unite Canadian pension industry stakeholders in supporting stronger retirement outcomes for employees, she says.
“The government does their thing, but there’s nobody [who is] formally responsible for bringing all the stakeholders together to more holistically and collaboratively come up with [retirement] solutions. . . . If we want to be more collaborative and coordinated and create a more resilient retirement income system, we need the research but also the engagement of all the different stakeholders.”
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MacDonald notes the biggest issue that the centre is looking to address is the lack of employer-sponsored pension plans in the private sector.
“People are going to get about $20,000 from their old-age security, guaranteed income supplement and their Canada Pension Plan or Quebec Pension Plan, but the rest is supposed to be made up through private savings or employer-sponsored pension plans — [and] in the private sector, 80 per cent of people aren’t even in a workplace pension plan.
“We have this major gap in our system . . . so the idea here is how can we actually meaningfully improve pension coverage, both to people who operate in the private sector and among more vulnerable populations, like women, gig workers and immigrants.”