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To the editor:
Other years the Ontario Pension Board has published our ZERO% raise along with indexed raises for the other Public Service Pension Plan (PSPP) pensioners.
This year they chose a personal mailing as they announced 4.8 and 3% raises for everyone else.
So I dreamt of getting a raise, I’d splurge on a bottle of the “good stuff”; Heinz Ketchup. With a bit of a bump in CPP and OAS I could get something good to put it on.
A fellow can dream.
My letter arrived yesterday, darn it all, ZERO % for 2024 because the PSPP is and will be underfunded. It’s hard to figure out, the PSPP has been underfunded since 2003. When we joined to start 2020 together, the Ontario Pension Board ended 2019 with a $2.5 billion shortfall. They reached that all by themselves.
We gave them our pension fund, $587 million to pay for our pensions in 2020 and all the years thereafter. With no raises it’s clear that we have no part in the continuing underfunding. The OPB has managed that to - $3.961 billion at the 2022 year-end.
For 3 years now the OPB has refused to answer what our financial role in the shortfall is; however, It does make a nice sound bite when they have such a good-sounding excuse for denying our Ad Hoc raises.
Stephen Murray
Ashamed to be an OPB pensioner
