Evidence of meeting #11 for Finance in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was benefits.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Professor and Chair in Insurance and Risk Management, Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Universities are a bit of a weird animal, which have a contributory defined benefit plan.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Do you think anybody is going to be doing defined benefit plans any more?
Professor and Chair in Insurance and Risk Management, Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, As an Individual
I think they're a wonderful source of security. If we can keep the ones we have, we'd be doing very well.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Well, you're not going to get an argument from me, that's for sure.
Professor and Chair in Insurance and Risk Management, Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Eliminating the complexity would help a lot, but the risk and.... The employment world has changed. People staying with one employer for 40 years is no longer the norm.
Professor and Chair in Insurance and Risk Management, Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Therefore the defined benefit's a harder thing to match up with employment.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
When you talk about creating the infrastructure needed for the private sector to offer efficient investment vehicles, what's the problem? Why can't that be done?
Professor and Chair in Insurance and Risk Management, Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Right now there are rules that prohibit the comingling of funds. So if a union plan wants to have a multi-employer-sponsored arrangement they can, with the union named as the plan sponsor. If a bunch of small ski resort operators want to get together to have a pension plan, pool their assets and administrative overhead costs and divvy them up, they can't do that because a financial institution like Manulife or Royal of Canada is not allowed to be a plan sponsor and take on the legal role of a plan sponsor.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
I have a final question, Mr. Wacheski.
On this desire to get to the top of the priority list, I'm not quite sure how high up the priority list you're going. Are you above unsecureds?
Liberal
As an Individual
We don't want to be super-priority; we just want to be above all the people who have the leverage we don't have.
Liberal
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Okay. So you're creating a fourth category, if you will.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
It's like a fourth category, because you would have priority ahead of all unsecureds but below the government, if they owed taxes. That's kind of cute, isn't it?
