Pension troubles in store for retired workers as plans across Canada face deficits
By Kenyon Wallace
Toronto Star
January 9, 2012
When Ellen Sargent took a job as a purchaser with the City of Saint John in New Brunswick 26 years ago, she didn’t expect that living below the poverty line when she retired would become a possibility.
Like most municipal employees across Canada, Sargent was promised an indexed pension by the city as part of the terms of her contract — a pension that both she and the city would contribute to over the course of her employment.
But now the 55-year-old widowed retiree is facing the prospect of having to subsist on her $25,000 annual pension without it increasing to meet the rising cost of living.
That’s because the City of Saint John is struggling with a $165 million funding shortfall in its pension plan, and is attempting to make a number of contentious changes, including suspending pension indexing, to close the gap.
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