Your Executive Committee hopes everyone had a festive holiday season and wishes a Happy New Year to all. As with 2006, 2007 promises to be a very interesting one as CLPENS continues to move forward in settlement negotiations with Canada Life/Great West Life/Power Corp.
Canada Life recently announced that pension benefits will increase by .93% effective January 1st and will be reflected in your first pension payment of the year. The increase is based on the year over year CPI index for Oct. 31, 2006. Confirmation of the adjustment can be obtained by visiting the Bank of Canada web site www.bankofcanada.ca/ and looking at Publications, Page 20 of the Review. An explanation of how indexing is applied to your benefit can be found on the CLPENS website.
The Indexing and Financial sections of the website have recently been updated with the latest data including the figures from the January 1, 2006 Valuation Report.
As outlined on the CLPENS website, the plaintiffs’ motion for certification as a class proceeding was scheduled for hearing in the Superior Court of Justice on November 14, 2006. Madam Justice Hoy adjourned the motion pending the Court of Appeal’s decision in Potter v. The Bank of Canada and pending settlement negotiations among the parties.
As previously reported Canada Life delivered a confidential proposal to resolve the litigation on November 9, 2006. After reviewing the proposal the plaintiffs delivered a counterproposal to Canada Life on December 21, 2006. To date there has been no further response.
Madam Justice Hoy has scheduled a case conference with all representative counsel for Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 10 a.m. This case conference is not open to the public.
We will continue to advise the membership of ongoing developments.
Currently the CLPENS membership stands at 1016. Of this 318 are voting members.
All current voting members who have not yet done so need to renew their membership for the 2006-2007 year by forwarding the $25 annual renewal fee, payable to CLPENS, to:
CLPENS Group
P.O. Box 37036
6502 Yonge St.
North York, Ont.
M2M 4J8
Until 2002, Canada Life published a print magazine for all retirees, called the PELICAN POST. After it was discontinued, Charles Cooper, along with the late Roz McArthur, started an e-mail newsletter in October 2002 to fill the void left by the cancellation. PPeP is a forum for social news about former Canada Lifers. PPeP is independently produced, and relies solely on input from Canada Lifers. Charles has been kind enough to notify his readership of the CLPENS group and the dates of our upcoming meetings, which we appreciate. Anyone with an e-mail address is welcome to subscribe and/or contribute information to PPeP by contacting the editor at coopercy@sympatico.ca.
President: Wib Antler
Vice President: Ed Barrett
Secretary and Treasurer: Gary Nummelin
Committee Members: Phil Davy, Alex Harvey, David Kidd, Jim Martin, Shriram Mulgund, Brian Lynch, Fred Taggart
NOTE: Previous newsletters are available on our website. The Group's website is www.clpens.com . If you have information or opinions to share with us, send your submission to clpens@rogers.com .