Rayonier Advanced Materials is transferring a portion of its Canadian defined benefit plan obligations with a $293-million annuity buyout. Through the transaction, Sun Life will take over the responsibility for pension benefits owed to nearly 1,500 Ontario and Quebec pensioners and beneficiaries. The plan members include former employees of forestry company Tembec, which was acquired […]
Globally, negative yielding bonds are alarming investors. And while Canadian government bonds haven’t gone negative, movement in other countries is demonstrating to institutional investors that anything is possible. So if bond yields do go negative, what could this mean for Canadian pension plans’ funding statuses? Canadian defined benefit plans can be valued in three different ways, all […]
As employer-sponsored pension plans and personal retirement savings continue to shrink, the third pillar of Canada’s retirement income troika, the publicly funded Canada Pension Plan, is seeing improvements. Some of the enhancements, which are being gradually phased in from Jan. 1, 2019, borrow from what Australia already has in place for its superannuation system. In […]
Since the Teachers’ Retirement Allowance Fund, which is the defined benefit pension plan for public school teachers and other eligible employees in Manitoba, was introduced in 1925, it has made significant strides around asset mix and governance. In the early days, the fund’s asset mix consisted largely of federal, provincial and municipal bonds, but in […]
Roughly 3,200 Canadian National Railway Co. workers are on strike with outstanding issues including time-off provisions and lifetime caps on certain benefits. The strike, which began at midnight on Nov. 19, has seen conductors, train personnel and yard workers represented by the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference pushing for further bargaining progress on these issues and others, including safety and fatigue. […]
The University Pension Plan is appointing Gale Rubenstein as the inaugural chair of its board of trustees. The UPP will be the province’s first jointly sponsored defined benefit plan for Ontario’s university sector on its official registration date of Jan. 1, 2020. The plan will involve sponsorship from the University of Toronto, University of Guelph […]
The Federal Court has certified a $100 million class action brought by former members of the Canadian Armed Forces reserves who alleged that the government illegally delayed their retirement benefits. “There were 1,300 complaints to the CAF ombudsman between 2006 and 2017,” says Adam Tanel, an associate at Koskie Minsky LLP and co-counsel for the class. The […]
The Government of Quebec is planning to introduce a bill in the spring of 2020 that would allow employers in the province to implement target-benefit pension plans. The provincial government has already given a mandate to Retraite Québec to develop a regulatory framework for the plans, said Minister of Finance Éric Girard at an event in Quebec City last week. […]
Governments in Asia are stepping up their pension reforms to boost retirement savings adequacy, potentially generating business opportunities for asset managers operating in the region. Retirement income security is a top concern for Asian governments, noted a press release from Cerulli Associates. In response to aging and other pension challenges in the region, governments are amending […]
Canadian defined benefit pension plans posted a median 1.7 per cent return in the third quarter of 2019, down from 2.7 per cent in the previous quarter, according to the latest RBC Investor and Treasury Services’ universe. In comparison to the same quarter last year, the returns represent an improvement, with DB plans posted a meagre […]