A recent report highlighting that Albertans are currently paying more into the Canada Pension Plan than the province’s retirees are taking out demonstrated an example of a fundamental reality of defined benefit pension plans: not everyone gets the same thing. Within DB plans, if you subdivide cohorts of a member population, you will often find some groups subsidizing […]
Since using a single benchmark portfolio to measure a pension plan’s funding status paints a narrow picture, a new report by PBI Actuaries and Consultants looked at four different portfolio types to see how the equity fall off at the end of the year, among other market events, affected different asset mixes. The liability portfolio kept […]
A report published by the Canadian Public Pension Leadership Council in February 2019 offers compelling evidence about the broad benefits of workplace pension plans. The report, by Robert Brown, builds on a 2017 CPPLC report by Bob Baldwin that asked Canadians to quantify the maximum amount they’d pay, as a percentage of annual income, to maintain their […]
The Pension Investment Association of Canada has released comments on the proposed strategic priorities for the newly formed Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario, which will officially launch this spring. “In our first year, our focus is on burden reduction and regulatory effectiveness,” the FSRA said in a consultation paper on proposed priorities for 2019-20. […]
Does your organization’s mental health or diversity program deserve recognition? Are you leading the way when it comes to drug and benefits plan innovation? Is your company’s pension performance award-worthy? Benefits Canada’s annual Workplace Benefits Awards is officially open for nominations. Submit your entries here. The 2019 awards will continue to honour the triumphs and […]
In early 2016, Rogers Communications Inc. announced it would be closing its defined benefit plan to new entrants and replacing it with a defined contribution plan. The company offered staff six months to enrol in the DB plan before its closure on July 1, 2016. While it faced several challenges in administering the DB plan, […]
In its 2019 budget announcement on Thursday, the Ontario government said it’s taking a step towards implementing a framework for target-benefit pension plans. The budget included preliminary legislative changes that would expand the eligibility criteria for multi-employer target-benefit plans to include non-unionized multi-employer plans, in addition to those that are collectively bargained. The move is intended […]
Workers over the age of 55 could make up more than a quarter of Canada’s labour force by 2036, according to new labour force predictions from Statistics Canada. Despite this trend, the agency predicted the country’s workforce participation rate will continue to decrease from its peak of 68 per cent in 2008 to 63 per […]
Canadian defined benefit pension plans’ solvency position rose in the first quarter of 2019, according to two new pension indexes. Representing the solvency ratio of a hypothetical plan, Mercer Canada’s index sat at 106 per cent on March 31, up from 102 per cent at the start of the year. The median solvency ratio of Mercer clients’ pension plans […]
The union representing University of Saskatchewan support workers is one step closer to striking in an ongoing dispute regarding its members’ wages and pensions. Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 1975, which has been without a contract since the end of 2015, voted to strike in September 2018 but has been held back by two disputes in front of […]