This is your daily pension announcement: It is mailbag day for The Pension War Room™️. Question from Squiggy: "Does the GOA (Travis) own the funds in the pension plans?" Emphatic HELL NO! I know Travis has said that in the Leg at different times. #AbLeg#handsoffmypension
Remember with @joececiyyc: legislation was passed to (in his words) "get the politics out of pensions". While Travis has said it is his job to "maximize the funds" and to ensure we have a "made in Alberta portfolio". Putting the politics right back into pensions. #ABLeg
Getting back to the question of ownership of funds held in trust, we go to the Teachers' Pension Plan Act 17(3) which says in part: (3) The Board shall...
(b) manage those assets for the sole benefit of the persons entitled to the respective benefits. #ABLeg
"Sole benefit" is crystal clear. But, if you work for @Alberta_Finance keep reading section 18(2)a: (2) The assets of
(a) the post‑1992 fund belong beneficially to the persons entitled to the post‑1992 benefits,...
and the Crown has no claim to those assets.
ATRF assets have now been completely transferred to @aimcoinvests. Remember that the most recent 10-year value add for ATRF was 0.70%, BCIMC 1.1%, and AIMCO 0%. Facts never mattered here. Apparently. #ABLeg#handsoffmypension#milburned
Travis nor Kevin have defined a "made in Alberta" portfolio might consist of. May I be so bold as to remind you that ATRF portfolios were all made in Alberta? #ABLeg#handsoffmypension
This is to say, again, that the GOA has considerable power over AIMCO when it should not. The power to appoint and remove directors should lie with AIMCO's clients not with Bumbles. #ABLeg#handsoffmypension
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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
The plan funded ration is up to 99% (up from 81% in 2014). This all important ratio means that assets almost = liabilities. This improvement is the result of important work the ATRF Board did over the last 10 years. #ABLeg
If you recall, some years ago Redford and Horner tried to cut the other provincial pension plans because they thought their funded ratios were too low. (maybe 80%)
Fast forward: all those plans above 100% and looking good. #ABLeg#neverbelieveapolitician