Jim Flynn, a trustee of the Nursing Homes and Related Industries Pension Plan and a former assistant regional director of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, remembers a time when the industry’s workers — predominantly women in precarious employment with physically demanding jobs — would retire without a pension plan. “The need was great,” he […]
Willis Towers Watson has promoted Wendy Poirier to the role of global well-being leader. With the consulting firm since 2005, Poirier’s previous roles include innovation leader, growth leader and region leader in health and benefits for Canada. She also spent 10 years as a managing principal at Towers Perrin before it became Willis Towers Watson. At the beginning […]
In 2018, 25 per cent of Canadians, or 7.8 million people, aged 15 and older provided care to a family member or friend with a long-term health condition, a physical or mental disability or problems related to aging, according to data published this week by Statistics Canada. This compares to 8.1 million people, or 28 […]
About a year ago, Benefits Canada introduced a few new columns and features, including our Head to Head, where every month we choose a hot industry question and open up a two-person debate. I’m often tempted to join in the discussion, but ultimately fall on the side of restraint. This month, though, I can’t resist […]
I think it’s fair to say that retirement security is top of mind for the majority of Canadians. And politicians are listening: it was constructive to see all the major parties coming up with measures to deal with the issue during the most recent election campaign. In my last editorial, I summarized the various election […]
It’s an election year and, of course, I have a lot of opinions. But I’ll try to keep my political leanings as neutral as possible and simply lay out the facts. This issue will hit desks days before the federal election. However, as I write these words in mid-September, the main parties are just rolling […]
Group insurers are considering data more intelligently to develop products, services and plan designs that are optimal for plan sponsors, but also engage members by using their own personal health and transactional data to involve them in their own well-being. Speaking at Benefits Canada’s 2019 Halifax Benefits Summit on Sept. 24, Chris Goguen, manager of pharmacy benefits strategy and partnership at […]
When it comes to health-care spending in Canada, there isn’t a lot of variance between provinces, according to Joe Farago, executive director of private payers and investment at Innovative Medicines Canada. In a session at Benefits Canada’s 2019 Halifax Benefits Summit on Sept. 24, he said prescription drugs’ percentage of the total health-care budget has been fairly consistent, at 15 […]
As membership in traditional defined benefit pension plans continues to decline, it’s becoming more common to see “contingent” plans — including target-benefit, shared-risk, multi-employer and jointly sponsored — which require members to take on at least some of the risk that benefits may or may not meet expectations. At the same time, the term “sustainability” is […]
At the risk of cementing my reputation as an unapologetic literary nerd (I opened my last editorial with a George Bernard Shaw quote), I’ve always drawn inspiration from Virginia Woolf’s seminal work, A Room of One’s Own. If you haven’t read the essay, it’s basically an argument for creating both a literal and figurative space […]