Letters to the Editor

KIT’s spring issue provides great modelling for debunking myths aimed at destroying the integrity of Defined Benefits Pension Plans. Marvin Krawec’s article entitled “Defined Benefit Pension Plan” provides important factual information for counteracting erroneous attacks on these plans. Pension myths have been around for a while eroding confidence and misleading decisions regarding pension structures. Strong advocacy for defined benefit plans is essential to reverse the destabilization of a highly efficient and successful retirement saving strategy, not only for the pensioners, but also for the economy and the stability of the Canadian pension program.

Jim Leech and Jacquie McNish provide further evidence in their book, The Third Rail. They tell us that, “By almost any measure our defined benefit pensions are the most effective retirement savings system in the country.” They go on to explain that defined benefit plans are so self-sufficient that only 20% of those receiving pensions with defined benefits are eligible for federal GIS supplements. Leech and McNish report that twice as many retirees without defined benefits rely on government supplements.

However, damaging myths continue to propel organizations like the Canadian Federation of Taxpayers to lobby for the dismantling of defined benefit plans. The Saskatchewan Federation of Taxpayers wrote an open letter to Premier Wall in Saskatchewan imploring his government to get rid of such plans.

ACER-CART has been focusing political advocacy to address this mythology. It forwarded a generic letter to each of its member associations in an effort to support advocacy in the provinces and the Yukon. Together, from the national to the provincial/ territorial and local levels, we must share the information such as is provided in Marvin Krawec’s article and

hold to account those who perpetrate the myths and to ensure that policy makers make reasoned decisions to preserve and to ensure that the defined benefit pension model is a central feature in Canada’s pension scene.

By publication time, I will have had the opportunity to attend your 2014 AGM. Thank you for the opportunity to extend the greetings of ACER-CART, its Western Regional Team and President Thomas Gaskell, who conveys his “most sincere appreciation for your support of ACER-CART efforts over the past number of years.”

George Georget, ACER-CART Western Regional Representative and Chair of ACER-CART’s Political Advocacy Ad Hoc Committee

Hello Doreen. My copy of the Spring 2014 KIT arrived in my mailbox yesterday and a very fine magazine it is indeed. It’s full of useful information and well laid out. I appreciate all the work that goes into producing KIT and making sure all we MTS retirees are kept up to date.

Best wishes in the hopes that Spring will find you soon, Carole Wylie New Westminster BC