At the September meeting we reviewed the financial positions of a couple of our employee-paid benefits, and we’re pleased to report both our Long-Term Disability and Optional Life Insurance plans are in good shape.
More than a year ago, we voted to use some of the surplus money in the funds to subsidize the premiums that you pay for these benefits. We also said we would review the funds on an annual basis to make sure the subsidies are sustainable, and through the work of our consultants at Morneau Shepell we confirmed that continues to be so.
In the case of the LTD plan, we also confirmed that we had set aside enough money to continue the practice of providing cost of living increases on an ad hoc basis to members on LTD who don’t qualify for automatic inflation protection. The automatic increases were discontinued in 2002, when the LTD plan faced significant financial challenges.
During the meeting we were brought up to date on how the various funds in our voluntary Group RRSP have been performing. For the most part the funds available through Great West Life have performed well relative to the indexes or benchmarks against which they’re measured. At the same time, members who have opted to invest through the group RRSP are paying lower management fees than they would if they were to purchase the funds directly from other sources, outside the group plan. We would encourage members who are interested in contributing to an RRSP to consider the option of doing it through the CBC Group Plan, which includes the ability to contribute through payroll deduction.
Finally, the CMG team at the CCSB welcomes our new Ottawa-based staff rep, Olivier Roy, to the table. Olivier is replacing our Vancouver-based western rep, Patty Ducharme, at the CCSB and will be the CMG representative on the Special Assistance Fund subcommittee.
For more information regarding the Special Assistance Fund, please see: http://www.cmg.ca/en/cbcradiocanada/special-assistance-fund/
Your representatives at the September 2016 CCSB
Annick Forest
Marc-Philippe Laurin
Michael Robert
Jon Soper
Gaynette Spafford
Michael Tymchuk
Patty Ducharme
Olivier Roy