bjornson remarks

Peter Bjornson's remarks to RTAM rally, Oct. 10
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, Retired Teachers’ Association of Manitoba, fellow teachers both active and retired and fellow members of the Legislative Assembly.

I would like to thank you for yet another opportunity to speak with you regarding our continuing efforts to improve teachers’ pensions in Manitoba.

A year ago I stood before many of you and spoke about some of the issues that we face as teachers and the pension challenges that we all want to address.

I spoke about how the challenges we face were created over a generation and that finding a solution that provides stability to the TRAF fund while allowing for COLA would take time and would be addressed through a series of steps.

Last year I committed to keep dialog open and work toward introducing the next step in addressing our pension challenges.

From the day we took office, our government identified teachers’ pensions as an issue of importance and took action both immediately and over the span of our mandate to address the concerns of teachers both active and retired.

Shortly after taking government, we introduced what was considered the first step: a plan to address the unfunded pension liability for teachers.

In 2005 we took the second step and increased government and teacher contributions to the TRAF fund by 1.1%. This step marked the first time in 25 years that contributions to the fund were increased.

Over the past year, we took the latest step by contributing $1.5 Billion to the Teachers’ Retirement Allowances Fund (TRAF) fund.

This $1.5 Billion contribution, will fund 75% of the TRAF unfunded employer’s pension liability, that had gone unfunded under previous governments.

Making the $1.5 Billion contribution to the fund addressed some of the long-term stability concerns and allowed the Teacher Pension task Force to begin work on addressing our COLA challenge.

Over the past year, government representatives have been working with the members of the Teacher Pension Task Force and RTAM with the goal of finding a COLA solution that all parties at the table could accept.

There are some interesting options currently on the table and RTAM’s endorsement of a 2/3 COLA plan during the last election allowed the Teachers’ Pension Task Force to explore all options that could conceivably provide retired teachers increased COLA in the short term and a more stable COLA over the long term.

As always, it is important to move forward with a plan that works for teachers both active and retired. To that end, it is important that any step taken to provide a better COLA to retired teachers be endorsed by all the parties currently at the table.

Having taken several steps over past years, I can assure that, as Minister, I remain committed to addressing your concerns and that all parties will continue to work to take the next step.

As a teacher, your pension concerns remain my pension concerns. I can assure you that our government remains committed to finding a solution that works for the retired teachers of today while ensuring that the teachers’ pension plan is sustainable for the active teachers of today and tomorrow.
I want to leave you with the reminder that it has been this government that has taken several steps to improve teacher pensions and we will continue to work towards COLA improvements.