National Consultations on Private Pensions

Mr. Ted Menzies MP.
Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance

Dear Mr. Menzies:

I understand that you will be conducting consultations across Canada on the legislative and regulatory framework for federally regulated private pension plans, and will be in Toronto on March 20, 2009.

I wish to participate in those discussions and to make a submission to you at that time.

Our association represents the interests of over 2.5 million Canadians who own income trusts and the over 75% of Canadians who are not members of defined benefit pension plans.

The matters of policy interest to our association are:

(1) We wish to understand how Canadians and the Canadian Public Capital Markets, benefit from the policy measures contained in your government’s Tax Fairness Plan, which tax income trusts that are Publicly Listed at 31.5% (and are subjected to restrictive growth provisions) whereas those self same income trusts if taken private are not? This has lead to a rash of takeovers of undervalued trusts held in RRSPs, by Private Pension Funds like OMERs, PSP, Caisse, etc. It has become a government exercise of robbing Peter to pay Paul, in which Peter is the average Canadian saving for retirement and Paul is the Government sponsored pension plans.

What is the policy intent of this? RRSPs are being placed at a profound economic and savings disadvantage, when RRSPs were originally set up by government to serve as the common man’s version of pension plans? How is this consistent with your stated policy goal of the Tax Fairness Plan, which ostensibly was to ‘level the playing field”?

(2) I wish to provide you with first hand information of the abuses of Pension Funds such as Ontario Teachers’ (OTTP) with respect to their use of mechanisms (McCague Holdings for example) designed with the sole intent of circumventing OTTP’s federal regulations, which otherwise restrict their voting ownership of Canadian corporations to 30% or less. This abuse arouse in Ontario Teachers’ proposed purchase of BCE Inc., which is a transaction that I opposed in interventions before the CRTC and the Supreme Court of Canada, on the very basis that this acquisition contravened the Pension Benefits Standards Act.

Please let me know the details of your trip to Toronto and the best time for a meeting with you and members of our association.

Thank you in advance.

Yours truly,


Brent Fullard
President and CEO
Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors
www.caiti.info

647 505-2224 (cell)

Cc. Hon John McCallum
Cc. Thomas Mulcair
Cc. Paul Crete
Cc. Elizabeth May