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| Paramedic Pensions (Member's Statement) |
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(September 25, 2009) Mr. Jim Wilson: I rise to urge the government to act quickly to resolve an issue that concerns thousands of public sector workers in Ontario, including a number of paramedics from Simcoe county. As members will know from my private member's resolution debated on June 4, due to past divestments of provincial services, thousands of Ontarians have a split pension problem that will severely affect their retirement income.In my riding, paramedic services were divested from the province to the county of Simcoe in the 1990s. At that time, paramedics were led to believe that nothing would change regarding their salaries, employment benefits or years of service. Although their pension plan changed from the hospitals of Ontario pension plan or the OPSEU pension trust to OMERS, there was to be no negative effect on their pension entitlements. After the divestment, they discovered that they would receive two pension cheques when they retired, one for service with the government of Ontario and one for service with the county. The amounts that each of them will receive from their two pensions will not recognize their years of continuous service and will therefore cause them to receive a significantly reduced pension through no fault of their own. The government's own expert commission on pensions recommended a prompt resolution to this specific problem, and so far the McGuinty government has been very slow to act. In fact, each time I've raised this through petitions and letters, it's been unclear what the government's position is on this matter. Today in the House, the Minister of Finance said he would be bringing forward legislation to address the recommendations of the Expert Commission on Pensions, and I want to make sure he includes a solution that corrects the problems for paramedics in Simcoe county. |
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