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By Alex McCuaig - CHAT News

FAIR DEAL PANEL

Pension talk dominates Fair Deal Panel discussion

Jan 18, 2020 | 12:46 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – Despite bitterly cold temperatures, nearly 300 people turned out for one of the final Fair Deal Panel engagement sessions Friday night at the Cypress Centre.

Possible changes to Albertan’s pensions was the dominant topic of conversation from the nearly 40 speakers who took the opportunity to address the panel.

But that panel was short two members following the sudden death of Jason Goodstriker earlier this week and Preston Manning missing his fourth straight engagement session.

Panel member and former PC MLA Donna Kennedy-Glans said despite the absence, Manning continues to be a contributing member of the panel – citing scheduling conflicts for his absence.

As for the dominant topic of Friday’s session, Kennedy-Glans said the future of pensions was definitely near the top.

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“There is actually a fair amount of support for a change in pension plans,” said Kennedy-Glans. “People understand the concept that we are a younger population, we are making contributions into a Canadian fund but we are drawing out of that fund a lesser amount because of the age of our population.”

That support for changes which would see Alberta develop its own plan to replace the Canadian Pension Plan was present at Friday’s meeting.

But that support, at best, was from half of those who spoke on the subject with many speakers asking for the status quo to remain regarding the CPP.

Nonetheless, panel member Cypress-Medicine Hat MLA Drew Barnes said the proposal for an Alberta pension plan has its merits.

“Contributions would be lower, benefits would be higher,” said Barnes. “Quebec as an example – eight-and-a-half million people have $371 billion in their fund, the other 29-million Canadians have $420 billion in their fund. So there is a lot of potential benefits.”

But two former MLAs who were in attendance at the meeting expressed some scepticism about the panel.

Former Speaker David Carter was the most direct expressing his opinion.

“The process is smoke and mirrors,” said Carter, “because the agenda has already been set by the kind of questions that are up there for people to respond to.”

For former Medicine Hat MLA Jim Horsman, his concerns are many centred around how some of the complex topics will fit within the constitutional context.

Horsman – who helped negotiate Alberta’s signing onto the 1982 Constitution Act under Premier Peter Lougheed – questioned whether or not the province requires its own constitution.

And if it does, how that would affect Alberta’s place in confederation.

The final panel meeting will be the yet to be announced rescheduled Airdrie meeting which was canceled Thursday due to the death of Goodstriker.

The panel is mandated to present its report to government by March 31.

Kennedy-Glans said she expects that report to be made public soon after that date.