Internal government documents can be used as evidence in Pension Surplus Trial
In a decision dated December 23, 2005, Justice De Lotbinière Panet of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that 128 internal government documents would be admitted into evidence in the court cases regarding the $30.2-billion surplus taken from the Canadian Forces (CF), the Public Service (PS), and the RCMP pension accounts.
The 128 documents support the plaintiffs’ argument that plan members legitimately consider that the government, as their employer and sole administrator of the pension plans, should act according to their best interests based on its trust and fiduciary obligations. According to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, the documents also show that the government instead used the surplus in the early 90s to pay down the national debt by using “opaque” and hidden accounting manoeuvres. They further demonstrate the government’s wide discretionary powers to unilaterally seize the assets from the pension accounts.
Most of these documents are statements, written by ministers and very high level government officials, on policies covering the pension plans, official statements to plan members (some in the form of information booklets), and briefings to decision makers, including memos to the President Treasury Board and correspondences between Treasury Board and the Ministry of Finance.
