As companies consider their options around the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, national employers with staff who work in Ontario and other provinces face additional questions about what to do. Ian Howcroft, vice-president of on the Ontario division of Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, has seen members of his organization face questions around internal equity since “now they’ll have a different requirement […]
The southern Alberta division of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires has changed its defined contribution pension provider and structure in a bid to offer its 1,600 employees a plan that is simple to understand and requires little administrative support. Since the not-for-profit security services company launched Mercer’s Planisphere in September 2015, it has seen its employee participation rise, from […]
A growing number of pension plan administrators are dealing with with the onerous task of tracking down missing plan members who have retired, according to speakers at an event hosted by the Association of Canadian Pension Management on Wednesday. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has 34,000 inactive members for whom it has no address or an incorrect […]
In recent years, Canada’s largest companies have struggled with the inherent ups and downs of managing risk in their defined benefit pension plans. Two employer-sponsored pensions in particular — despite experiencing similar types of labour strife, government intervention and plan redesign — have so far embarked on very different investment strategies to suit their businesses […]
The solvency position of Canadian pension plans declined in the first quarter of 2016, an impact of volatile markets, according to two reports published this week. According to the Mercer Pension Health Index, the median solvency ratio of the consultancy’s pension clients stood at 82% on March 30, 2016, down from 85% at the beginning of the […]
As confirmed last week, the federal budget has restored the age of eligibility for old-age security to 65, a move some in the industry are questioning. The government proposed to cancel the provisions in the Old Age Security Act that increase the age of eligibility for old-age security and guaranteed income supplement benefits from 65 to 67 and […]
The Liberal government has announced it will launch a consultative process on the investment rule that restricts pension plans from holding more than 30 per cent of the voting shares of a company. According to the 2016 budget, announced on March 22, the public consultation on the usefulness of the 30-per-cent rule will begin “shortly.” Read: Scrapping pension […]
In its 2016 budget, the federal government proposed changes to the agreement powers of the Pension Benefits Standards Act. The changes, according to the budget document, would “broaden the scope of its ability to enter into bilateral agreements with provinces under the PBSA, which will better allow the federal and provincial governments to work together to […]
A comparison of pension systems in Canada and Britain isn’t an apples-to-apples exercise — or even apples to grapefruits. But when it comes to pension reform, there are definitely overarching lessons for Canada. Britain’s reforms, of which auto-enrolment is a signature component, got underway in October 2012 with the country’s largest employers mandated to automatically […]
