History - page 2 of 4
The 80's: a new beginning
It was becoming more and more evident that the future work of the Association needed a stronger presence in Ottawa and that the continuing growth in membership — exceeding 8,000 in 1980 — would require full-time staff.
The National Office was established in Ottawa in 1981 in the Public Service Alliance of Canada headquarters building, and Frank Lancaster was hired to succeed Fred Whitehouse as National Secretary-Treasurer.
Membership recruitment received high priority, as funds for research and publicity were urgently needed. FSNA’s longstanding request to have a leaflet enclosed with the monthly pension cheques was granted in 1982. Membership reached the 20,000 mark.
In 1983, compensation restraint legislation was imposed on public sector pensions, as well as salaries, family allowances, OAS, and income tax exemptions and brackets. FSNA fought hard against this anti-inflation program that limited the cost-of-living increases to 6% (1983) and 5% (1984) at a time when inflation was running at double-digit levels. FSNA obtained an additional 0.5 percent for federal retirement pensions.
To this day, it remains an FSNA objective to recover the ground lost by pensioners who retired prior to 1983.
In the spring of 1985, the government announced that the “current guarantee of unlimited inflation adjustment will be terminated”. FSNA waged the greatest battle in its history: interviews, press briefings, conferences with parliamentary caucus groups and a tide of letters from individual members brought backbenchers from all parties to support full indexing. The legislation subsequently introduced, Bill C-33, was never passed. Indexing was saved, but there was no guarantee it would be preserved in the future.
Meanwhile, membership grew to 48,000, largely attributable to the 1986 Convention decision to grant membership rights to the spouse of a pensioner. This took effect just a few years before the superannuation acts suspending surviving spouses’ pensions upon remarriage were amended to guarantee the continuation of benefits to these spouses, something for which FSNA had been campaigning for over several years.
FSNA continued to press the government to permit some form of direct pensioners’ involvement in the control and development of the Group Surgical Medical Insurance Plan (GSMIP) and to give pensioners access to the Dental Care Plan that was available to federal government employees. FSNA also embarked on a campaign opposing the 1989 budget that proposed to clawback OAS benefits.
It is of interest to note that by the time the Association celebrated its 25th anniversary, it had become formally chartered as a not-for-profit corporation, gaining a legal status that enabled it to contract with government or business firms.
