How, exactly, does one get into pension law? John Solursh, partner emeritus in the pension and employee benefits group at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP in Toronto, and this year’s winner of the Benefits Canada Lifetime Achievement award, pauses for a moment. “Well, I actually wanted to be an actuary.”
The jovial Solursh not only has a great sense of humour, he has an even greater sense of pension law. “John’s overall impact on the pension industry has been to help develop and nurture what was, and remains, a newly emerging area of law,” according to his nominator.
Solursh joined Blakes upon completing the Bar Admission Course in March 1970. He began in estate planning and trusts, including retirement issues, and by the early 1970s, his practice was focused primarily on income tax. “I would occasionally get a benefits case,” he says.
But by the late ’70s, he began work on pension and employee benefits plans as a solicitor, working with litigation counsel when the issues were heading for the courts. The fun part was the case law, he admits, because there were no precedents. “Some lawyers don’t like that, but I enjoyed it.”
One of the first cases he worked on with litigation counsel was Re: Reevie, in the early 1980s, which was the first major decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal on the withdrawal of pension surplus by an employer from a pension plan.
He was retained by the NHL to advise on an appeal or implementation in the early 1990s of an Ontario Supreme Court decision relating to Andy Bathgate, Gordie Howe and other retired players. It dealt with a use of an experience rate credit (a form of surplus assets) in the players’ pension plan. Although Solursh admits he’s not an obsessed sports fan, “it’s great when you get tickets to the all-star games.”
He’s also lectured globally during his career, speaking on a variety of pension topics (plan governance, Canadian pension plan regulation and plan investment) and on employee compensation-related issues (cross-border compensation arrangements, taxation of mobile employees and deferred compensation) for a number of esteemed associations, including the American Bar Association, the International Pension & Employee Benefits Lawyers Association and the International Bar Association. Countries on his lecture circuit have included India, Hong Kong, France, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Hungary. “You get a better perspective,” he says of his overseas speaking opportunities. “We see a lot through Canadian eyes, and a lot of socioeconomic issues about saving money for retirement are international issues.”
His expertise and judgment are also widely recognized beyond Canada’s legal community. He was asked by the Canadian Institute of Actuaries to establish and become the first chair of an independent Actuarial Standards Oversight Council (he is the only lawyer on the council). He recruited the initial members of the council, primarily non-actuaries with expertise in the pension or insurance area. “It’s a great way to give back by focusing on the public interest, without worrying about how much to get paid,” he says.
Now 65, Solursh is essentially retired from the firm, but he still spends limited time doing follow-up for clients on matters that were in progress before his official retirement last year. He’s looking forward to much more travelling in the coming years (but not on the lecture circuit) and his continued part-time involvement as chair of the Financial Services Commission of Ontario and the Financial Services Tribunal.
And though he admits he has no desire to write a book, a script could be in the making. “I’d like to write a TV show about an actuary…and put it on at four in the morning.”
© Copyright 2010 Rogers Publishing Ltd. This article first appeared in the December 2010 edition of BENEFITS CANADA magazine.