Pension surplus appeal to be heard in April
The Court of Appeal for Ontario has set the dates of April 19 to 21, 2010, to hear the appeal of the judgement rendered in November 2007 by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
The 2007 judgment dismissed the actions challenging the pension surplus provision of Bill C-78 that allowed the federal government to take the $30-billion surplus accumulated in the superannuation accounts of the Canadian Forces, the public service, and the RCMP.
January 11th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
While government claims that our pension plans ie; CPP and OAS are becoming increasing underfunded and we therefore are going to have to raise revenues, why did the last Liberal government see fit to take the $30 billion surplus from our pension funds? The money we know went to pay down the debt so that, the then Liberal government of the day could crow that they now had a surplus. And one wonders why we are appealing the decision?
January 11th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
All employees pay into their pension fund on a roughly 40% employee – 60% employer. The funds are controlled solely by the employer. Why does the employee not have at least a proportionate role in any decision making process regarding changes to their pension plan??? (PSSA; RCMPA; CFSSA: Judges Act).
The political whim of the day; Bill C-133 in 1982 and C-78 in 1999 adversely affected the payout/use of funds to members of the plans.
Prime Ministers, and their “no bodies” to quote Trudeau, have way too much power over my portion of my pension. Fiduciary responsibility to these pension plans goes out the window when government lack of fiscal control over their finances get them into trouble. They then cast around to see what they can get away with; steal etc. It is too simple for the government of the day to pass changes to our superannuation acts. Too much power for ethical management of pension funds.
It is time this sole political power over these pension plans had a check and balance, by the employees having input to all decision making processes that affect their plans.
MPs certainly have their snouts firmly in the pension trough. I am certain that changes to their plans are carefully vetted by the members of their plan!!! Why the double standard?
Bill Rowbotham
January 12th, 2010 at 2:17 am
NewsPension surplus balloons to $42 billion: expert witness
A former government auditor testified in Court that the surplus in the public service, RCMP and Canadian Forces pension accounts have now increased to $42.7 billion.
Scott Milne, an expert in public-sector accountancy and former auditor with the Office of the Auditor General, said that interest and actuarial evaluations have generated additional surplus in the former accounts. Although a total of about $29.18 billion has been taken by the government from 2000 to 2006, about $12.97 billion surplus is still left in the accounts. Contributions to these accounts ceased after April 1, 2000, and were channeled to the new Public Sector Pension Investment Board under Bill C-78. At that time, the surplus stood at about $31.25 billion.
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Fine – delighted there is a surplus. I’ll take mine now please. Because the way they have fiddled COLA and most government numbers in the last couple of decades, makes it an entirely reasonable assumption that our annual increases should have (had the numbers not been fiddled) been in our pockets, thus avoiding any cat-fight over surpluses.
January 18th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
will we receive any money from the pension fund
January 30th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
There would not be such a surplus, if retired pensioners were not denied proper/accurate information regarding their true entitlements… many public servants were and are defrauded on their pensions and entitled to more than what they are receiving. Furthermore, why is a survivor only entitled to half their spouse’s pension, when the family as a whole, had to do without this income at the time, as it was a forced mandatory deduction. This pension deduction affected the whole family, not just the annuitant… so the pension should benefit the whole family in full amount.
February 4th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
I could not agree more strongly with the comments made by
G. Rutherford about the survivor’s pension being only half of the pensoner’s. We are living mainly on my pension and the thought of leaving my wife with only half of what we live on now is very disturbing. The cost of housing will still be the same or more as will be the cost of utilities and transportation.
Is my family suddenly less worthy whenI die?
February 22nd, 2010 at 5:00 pm
It is very important that the public in general be educated that for our pensions
Many of us went through a wage freeze/rollback
Our cpp at sixty five is not an add on…but an offset.
That our wages would have reflected the deductions and benefit of the pension. So why arent the non public sector also setting aside as we did
It should not be a race to the bottom to see who gets the least pension
We also pay taxes
And we all made choices early on, including the envious general public as to who to work for.
Good luck with the appeal. Also dont forget the years of wage freezes and rollbacks and money grab that is currently under legal review.
Far too easy to scapegoat the federal public servant, with incorrect and incomplete information.
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:37 pm
I do not understand why the pension plan is even being considered to glean more money for the government to waste, when they squander such high pensions on their senate members after as little as five years, and members of Parliament after only seven years in government service! We pensioners had to put in, for the most part, thirty years of faithful service to the Government of Canada to get the much smaller pensions that we have been entitled to after paying in a mandatory deduction from our salaries. Where is the fairness in that? REDUCE THE SENATORS’ PENSIONS!!!
March 11th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
It would be fascinating to discover the source of all those ‘federal government pensions are gold-plated’ articles. What better way to invalidate our past contributions in the public’s mind than by suggesting to Canadians that we PS retirees are now sucking the public coffers dry with our greedy demands? And what better way to deflect attention from overly generous payouts to retiring politicians of every ilk? Is it too much to ask that our FSNA senior representatives will defend us in some meaningful way?
April 30th, 2010 at 11:44 am
I could not agree more with G.Rutherford and Jim Anderson that our spouse should receive our full pension, not just half when I pass away.
May 2nd, 2010 at 2:57 pm
I turned 65 at the end of March, so the end-of-April Superannuation cheque just received from my employer was an unwelcomed birthday present.
My monthly gross Superannuation dropped from $2043.50 to $1489.14……a 27% reduction for 24 years of high-stress employment as a PM2 Employment Insurance adjudicator
(9 years) and EI Investigator (15 years). So much for those “gold-plated public service pensions.”
“Congratulations on your 65th birthday, Mr. Rollins. You are now entitled to an Old Age Pension of $517 per month. Oh, by the way, we’re cutting your Superannuation by $554/month.”
I was not unaware this “hit” was coming, but it was a shock nevertheless.
The employer should be prosecuted for false advertising for continuing to use the misleading “2 % per year of service” pension calculation in its employee benefit brochures.
Every time I think of the employer’s theft of the $30 billion pension fund surplus – a surplus I contributed to – I’ll think of that 27% reduction in my Superannuation.
June 9th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Bernhard Madoff is in jail for his fraud he perpetrated on trusted investers. Why isn’t the same done to the the member of the Liberal party that stole the money from our pension surplus ?