Current Ontario MPP for the Carleton-Mississippi Mills riding, Norm Sterling, lost the provincial Conservative nomination meeting on March 31st to challenger Jack MacLaren.

The NRPC would like to express its appreciate to Norm for his many efforts to help former Nortel employees and wish him well in his next endeavours.

The NRPC expects Jack MacLaren to be true to his statement that he will deal with all issues facing his constituents should he win the seat in the next provincial election.  There are many former Nortel employees in the Carleton-Mississippi Mills riding.

 Be sure to read the letter to the editor of the National Post from Peter Benedek. 

Re: “Pension conflicts,” Ronald B. Davis, March 22

Ronald Davis writes that defined-benefit plan deficits are due to: (1) regulations permitting benefit promises to employees without requiring the contributions necessary to safely meet the promises, specifically by permitting the discounting of liabilities with expected but unearned returns on assets (this is what I call the lunacy of regulatory and actuarial practice), and (2) conflict of interest between employers’ management and shareholders, for choosing the cheaper but riskier to shareholders approach for accounting for pensions in order to beef up managements compensation.
But Mr. Davis forgot about the real conflict of interest that is between employer/shareholder and employee, whereby the former groups conspire to underfund employees’ pensions to pump up company financial and stock prices on the backs of the employees, whose pension plan assets and deferred wages (pensions) are put at risk in inappropriate investments and insufficient funding.
Then to top it all off, Mr. Davies opines that “under insolvency legislation, most pension plan claims for payment of a deficit in funding are rightfully among the last to be paid” — that is outrageous! If DB plans were part of the employees’ compensation package and employees were prevented by the government from making RRSP contributions because of their “pension adjustment” (the fictional amount that the employer contributed to employees’ pensions), then that is what should be paid to them before other unsecured creditors are paid in insolvency, because pensions are deferred wages.
Peter Benedek, CFA, Nortel pensioner, RetirementAction.com