The Canadian Institute of Actuaries is consulting with its members on the development of a public statement for policy-makers about what’s next for Canada’s retirement age. The consultation covers two main issues: whether Canadians should plan to work longer and what measures to employ to encourage that behaviour; and whether to raise the pensionable ages […]
How does an employer go about creating a mental-health strategy? In the case of Ontario’s Workplace Safety & Insurance Board, it brought its own employees into the conversation. Speaking during an event hosted by Manulife Financial Corp. in Toronto on Thurday, Lilian Riad-Allen, a senior consultant for the mental health and wellness program at the […]
Two-thirds of Canadians are tracking their health and well-being using either a mobile app or smart device, according to new research by Canada Health Infoway. The study, which surveyed more than 4,000 Canadians, found that among those who do use technology to track their health and well-being, 59 per cent are employed and 41 per cent […]
Aligning a mental-health strategy with an organization’s business values is key to ensuring the program has a long-term impact on employees and the company, according to one employer. “From our perspective, aligning with one of your strongest values, whether it’s safety or cost savings, and demonstrating how you can align with that and leverage what’s […]
Brink’s Canada Ltd. employees are pushing back again the company’s proposal to move them from a defined benefit pension into a defined contribution plan. The pension change is one of the central issues prompting members of Unifor to vote overwhelmingly to strike. In Ontario, 800 union members have voted 98 per cent in favour of […]
Members of the Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa pension will be voting this fall on whether to join the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology pension plan. The organization, which has been in place since July 1972, is considering the merger as a way to mitigate the defined benefit plan’s impact on its operating budget, says […]
Nova Scotia is following in the footsteps of a number of other provinces by looking into its funding framework for defined benefit pension plans. Like most jurisdictions in Canada, Nova Scotia requires defined benefit plans to be valued and funded on both a going-concern and a solvency basis. Under the review, the province is considering […]
While defined contribution plans were a small piece of the pension market when Benefits Canada first rolled off the presses in 1977, the Co-operative Superannuation Society had already been operating for almost 40 years by that point. Founded in 1939 in Saskatoon, the society’s pension plan is one of the country’s oldest and largest defined […]
Amidst all of the talk about transparency in the investment industry, the dialogue around refundable fees has been on the quiet side. Also known as symmetric fees, they go up when the performance is good and down when it’s bad. Take a manager earning a fixed fee of 0.65 per cent with a symmetric component […]
New DB pension proposals in Quebec, Ontario tackle annuity purchases.