The CBC Pension Plan continues to be in sound financial shape. That was the message delivered to the Consultative Committee on Staff Benefits at its June meeting. The plan’s CEO, Debra Alves, gave us an overview on the plan’s performance in 2015. The $6.5-billion-dollar plan continues to be healthy, especially when compared to many other defined benefit plans in the country. The 2015 annual report is available at: http://cbc-radio-canada-pension.ca/financial-reports/annual-reports/
From a user point of view, plan members can now login to the CBC Pension Administration website directly from CBC’s MySource portal. This has made it much easier to look at your pension benefits and hasreduced the need for people to reset passwords that they may have forgotten.
During the June meeting, we reviewed what’s been happening with our Long-Term Disability plan. Things have stabilized over the past couple of years. Last June, the CCSB approved a plan to prudently reduce a surplus that had accumulated. We set aside money to fund several years’ worth of cost of living increases for employees who don’t have automatic inflation protection. At the same time, we put money toward subsidizing the regular premiums that come off your wages every two weeks. (You pay 1.234% of salary rather than 1.5%.)
We’re happy to report the LTD plan remains in good shape to protect employees who have to go on extended medical leave. We are able to continue with inflation protection and premium subsidies as we planned.
The June meeting marked the first for Michael Tymchuk as a CMG representative. The committee has seen several new members from all the unions and CBC management since last year, and we held an orientation session to help everyone get up to speed on the sometimes technical aspects of our discussions on our benefit plans.
In short, no big news is good news on the benefits front as we head into the summer.
Your representatives at the June CCSB
Annick Forest
Marc-Philippe Laurin
Michael Robert
Jon Soper
Gaynette Spafford
Michael Tymchuk
Federico Carvajal
Patty Ducharme