In reference to my angry words yesterday, I would also quote Susan:
"Between Aug 2019 and Feb 2020 Alberta lost 24,400 jobs and not one major corporation relocated to Alberta to take advantage of the Kenney corporate tax cuts and its red tape free business environment." #ABLeg
"In fact, one major corporation chose to grab its tax savings and run to the US."
Institutional investor are fleeing at a rapid rate. And these tragically naive leaders think they can bring a bank head office to Calgary. #delusional#fail
I have talked to quite a few institutional investors over the course of my life. A unique breed for sure. They prize stability in a jurisdiction over a lack of red tape.
Red tape reduction is having the opposite effect than was intended. #ABLeg
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This is your daily pension announcement. The Pension War Room™️ is mildly piqued at the continued operation of @aimcoinvests without a Board Chair. Speculation centers around the UCP trying to appoint a politician and failing (twice) on conflict of interest grounds. #AbLeg
It is well past time that I remind you if you have a DB pension plan the money in that plan IS NOT your employers. It is held, in trust, and cared for by a trustee. That trustee has the fiduciary responsibility to invest wisely and to pay out benefits to you when the time comes.
It's important for me to hammer home this concept in law as we seem to have lots of MLAs and senior civil servants confused about this. Various FOIP requests have provided ample examples of teachers' pensions being referred to as a GOA "program". They are not. #Ableg
This is your daily pension announcement. The Pension War Room™️ can't believe this needs to be said again. But, after some side comments from some local UCP MLAs, here we go:
1. The GOA is a minority (49%) contributor to the
teachers' retirement plan. #ableg
2. The GOA does **NOT** guarantee pensions. They are guaranteed by the assets in the plan. (There was a guarantee until 1992.)
3. Since the GOA contributes 49%, they appoint half the Board Members to the ATRF Board. #AbLeg
4. The ATRF Board is the trustee with a fiduciary
duty to the plan members. Selecting investment
strategy and **in any normal world** hiring
investment managers is their responsibility. #AbLeg
This is your daily pension announcement: The Pension War Room™️ is awash in the irony that is the TBA faction of the UCP caucus. Did the slide deck used to convince caucus of DS's latest flaky idea have data from a fake polling firm? I feel the need to know. #AbLeg
We are expecting the @ATRFPension Annual Report (to Aug 23) to come out this week. We will be able to see just how far @aimcoinvests has come to saving us $40 million each and every year. My informed opinion is they have saved teachers $0. Every claim AIMCO made was false. #AbLeg
Here again, for posterity's sake, is the **top level** analysis done by AIMCO and provided to TBF. This really shows two things: AIMCO can't recognize the Mother of All conflicts of interest, and is AIMCO is incapable of calculating a risk adjusted return. #AbLeg
This is your daily pension announcement. The Pension War Room™️ reveals this King's Bench pension decision. If you recall, LAPP, PSPP and SFPP are holding @aimcoinvests and GOA accountable for $1.33 billion dollars of VOLTS losses. #ABLeg canlii.org/en/ab/abkb/doc…
It looks like the GOA tried to sever themselves from the (top secret) arbitration hearing. So your hardworking pension plans needed to go to King's Bench Court to have the GOA again added as a defendant. Which they were, with costs. #AbLeg
This is a thorough ruling. It is hard to think that they even argued such a stupid position: that the GOA had no responsibility for @aimcoinvests even though they own them and are responsible for appointing board members. #AbLeg
The Pension War Room™️ notes that you must be disappointed if you expected someone with a medical background as CEO of AHS. Instead you get Athana. Famous for pension misinformation back in the day. (She was DM of TBF during pension theft.) #AbLeg
A bunch of my old tweets got new life with this announcement. I had catalogued stupid and untrue things she had said about pensions. Stuff like "the GOA assumes all of the pension liability" and "the GOA pays for public sector pensions".
She seemed unaware that teachers, for instance, contribute 51% to their pensions and assume 51% of the liability.
She also seemed unaware that ordering a fiduciary trustee to use certain investment managers will bite the GOA in the ass again and again. #AbLeg
The Pension War Room™️ will again sink into the effluent of pension discourse with a cautionary tale from 1992. The teachers' plan was seriously underfunded (mostly due to GOA).
Teachers were talked into a solution that involved them contribution 1.6% of pay. #AbLeg
In hindsight we see that was a number with little basis in reality. And, after teachers started making that contribution it was found to be "wrong" that they needed to contribute 3.1% of pay. Nearly double.
Bait and switch 'berta style. #AbLeg
I'm afraid that the APP is following the same proven strategy. A lowball contribution rate until **after** decisions are made. Then **mistakes were made** and the contribution rate is all of a sudden higher than CPP. #AbLeg