Saturday night Special Interest deep dive: law history around shared risk pension in New Brunswick. It certainly is interesting!
I got into the collective agreements last summer for a brain project of my own & I was very disheartened by the salaries. Our cared-for deserve to be surrounded with folks who are cared for by their employers as they’re expected to care for us. Different “cared for” but equal. I could feel there is more to the situation than just salaries.
Something hasn’t been adding up about this strike and this exploration certainly cleared up some of the ickiness I’ve been feeling around it. At the base: why is the province of New Brunswick so gung-ho for the shared risk they’re abandoning shared benefit or defined contribution? Trying to change to risk portfolio pension on people of defined benefit culture is of course going to backfire - it's an immediate culture-clash. Any good insurance advisor even knows this!
So, if I am reading all this correctly, the province has been pushing shared risk pension for ten years with great pushback to a point where they got sneaky and hoodwinked a few unions into splitting pensions but treating them all as shared risk pension portfolios (See reference number 7). Now come the questions: with shared risk pensions being so carefully outlined and a lot of legislation obviously went into criteria for transferring:
Why did they have to force it in such a way that left it’s members without any say?
Why did they feel the need to make a big show of continuing to honour union members’ pension comfort zones to go about this all backhanded like?
In the original act, there were flimsy mechanisms to push pension changes without consent. There must be accountability mechanisms otherwise there is nothing shared about this at all. In defined benefits, there was an element of being cared for by the pension super.
There is now a distinct lack of trust that has only gotten worse due to methods that are far from collaborative and far from the best interest of our province’s greatest asset - its people. I’ve said it out loud & I’ll say it here too - how do you expect to create a healthy & educated population when the folks who care & teach are not empowered. Empowerment starts with being able to feel like you have enough money to take care of yourself & your family.
Thank you for reading.
Amanda Rose Horsman
The unLibrarian
References
NEW BRUNSWICK REGULATION 91-195 under the PENSION BENEFITS ACT (O.C. 91-1060) http://laws.gnb.ca/en/showpdf/cr/91-195.pdf
An Act Respecting Pensions under the Public Service Superannuation Act https://www.gnb.ca/legis/bill/file/57/4/bill-11-e.htm
An Act Respecting Members' Pensions, SNB 2014, c 27 https://www.canlii.org/en/nb/laws/astat/snb-2014-c-27/139299/snb-2014-c-27.html
An Act to Amend the Pension Benefits Act, SNB 2012, c 57 https://canlii.ca/t/53b91
Fraser Papers' Shared Risk Plans Regulation, NB Reg 2014-112 https://canlii.ca/t/52b3p
Pension Benefits Act http://laws.gnb.ca/en/showpdf/cs/P-5.1.pdf
The City of Fredericton v. Fredericton Police Association, Local 911 United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America et al., 2021 NBCA 30 (CanLII) https://www.canlii.org/en/nb/nbca/doc/2021/2021nbca30/2021nbca30.html
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