Since the topic has become central to medical-political discourse in recent months, numerous physicians have contacted her to express their support, she said. She recommended they channel that support to their elected officials in Ottawa.
Fernando said she believes naysayers of her idea, including physicians, are missing the fact that the stock market “always has a downturn, and people with RRSPs, because their portfolio is a small amount (relative to a pension fund), will always be caught up in that downturn. I have even heard some physicians go so far as to say if (today’s) physicians retire in their 70s and 80s, they deserve it, without realizing they could have been caught in a similar market downturn that physicians are in now.”
She continued, “There is a security in pension funds that simply isn’t present in RRSPs.”
She held up for example the post-employment income security teachers receive through organizations such as the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. “There is no Ontario teacher who will retire later than expected, because they are backed by a pension fund of more than $100 billion. If that fund loses billions, it uses the billions more it still has to allow its members to retire on time, and then makes up those losses in the future.”
Fernando said the worry among some physicians that they would have to become government employees in order to have a pension is unwarranted. Why? “Because no provincial government wants the cost they will incur by making us employees and paying for all of our overhead, all of our vacations, all of our sick days, because they simply can’t afford to pay for every cotton ball we use. The independent status of physicians is a huge money-saver for the system, and that will be maintained.”
The CMA has been doing “some work” on the pension topic since 2005, association president Dr. Robert Ouellet told the Medical Post.
In recent months, a CMA staff working group has been formed to research the topic, and the health economics as well as the political action committees are each looking at it was well. The groups are scheduled to meet by the end of March; results of that internal meeting will be shared with the CMA executive leadership in May, he said.
He stressed pensions for self-employed doctors is a thorny issue, as it involves federal tax law as well as provincial affairs, since physician remuneration and work conditions are the remit of the provinces and their medical associations.
Pensions for doctors “is not something that is not important to us, but it is very complicated, very complex,” he said.
Ouellet said the CMA has hired Mercer Human Resource Consulting to examine the matter. In a report to the Ontario Medical Association released in August 2005, Mercer said the federal government would be unlikely to reform the tax rules to allow self-employed doctors to have pensions.
The federal Conservatives have also launched a consultation campaign on pension reform. The hearings are scheduled to end in April.
Matthew Sylvain is a staff writer for the Medical Post.
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