New Minister of Finance

DuPont/INVISTA Pensioners Association - Canada

March 21, 2014

The Honourable J. Oliver
Minister of Finance
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Congratulations on your appointment as Minister of Finance and we wish you much success. We (DIPAC) are a member of the Canadian Federation of Pensioners (CFP) which is an association dedicated to the protection of defined benefit pension plans. Currently, there are eighteen members organization such as ours representing over 250,000 pensioners across Canada.

In conjunction with CFP, we have worked at both the federal and provincial levels to improve the security of defined benefit pension plans. In conjunction with your colleague; the Honourable James Moore, the Minister of Industry, we look forward to your leadership to strengthen both the Business Insolvency Act (BIA) and the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) with respect to unfunded pension deficits. In current bankruptcy proceedings, a plan's solvency deficiency is treated as an unsecured claim and is only addressed after all priority and preferred claims have been met. At this stage, there are generally little if any funds remaining for the pensioners. The situation is even worse as often the claim is often classified as unrecognized; the most blatant being the Nortel situation. In the review that your ministry is currently undertaking a review of the two above acts, we urge you to improve the priority status of unfunded pension plan deficits to secured creditor status.

Unlike most other creditors, pensioners are unable to make up for the loss of compensation they had been expecting from a bankrupt sponsor. Pensioners have already lived their lives of employment for which their pension was a part of the compensation they were promised. They cannot relive those years.

CFP will be advocating for legislative change that will afford greater protection to pensioners when their defined pension plan is unfunded coincident with the insolvency of the plan sponsor.

We appreciate your attention to this very crucial matter.

Sincerely yours;

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