Who’s Responsible for GM Pensions?
Ontario is the only Canadian province to offer pension insurance. It set up a Pension Benefit Guarantee Fund (PBGF) in 1980. It covers many of the flat-rate pension plans that are found in the heavily-unionized industrial sectors.
On 2009/04/08, Premier Dalton McGuinty was reported to have said that “Ontario’s pension plan safety net isn’t large enough to cover auto workers if GM goes bankrupt.”
If GM folds, should the province of Ontario accept responsibility for a situation that it allowed to happen? For more than a decade the province has allowed GM to postpone making it’s obligatory contributions to the fund.
Or should we allow the retirement incomes of pensioners who made payroll deductions in good faith to simply vanish?
© Fowler Media
