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EDMONTON — Alberta's lobbyist registrar has cleared the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers of any wrongdoing after allegations the group tried to influence government public relations strategy.

"CAPP is not in breach of the act," Lobbyists Act Registrar Bradley Odsen wrote in an eight-page investigation report tabled Monday in the legislature. "The totality of the evidence clearly shows that CAPP is in full compliance with the requirements of the Lobbyists Act."

The allegations against CAPP were levelled in August by the Alberta Federation of Labour.

In an Aug. 18 letter to the registrar, the federation alleged that a leaked briefing note dated Aug. 3 showed the petroleum producers had sought to influence government messaging about fracking and shale gas development in the province.

"CAPP has approached the (provincial government) requesting collaboration to enhance public communication on Alberta shale gas development," the briefing note said, adding that three government departments and Alberta's Energy Resources Conservation Board reviewed the organization's request.

The federation also claimed three lobbyists representing CAPP were not listed in the lobbyist registry under CAPP's filing, though all three were registered lobbyists for their employers, which included Encana, Canadian Natural Resources Limited and Shell Canada Limited.

In his investigation report, Odsen ruled that "collaboration to enhance public communication" is not lobbying.

"Quite the contrary," Odsen wrote. "If anything, the communication in this case clearly amounts to an 'offer' from CAPP to work collaboratively with the Government of Alberta ... in an effort to benefit government.

"Government working collaboratively with stakeholders does not automatically make those stakeholders 'lobbyists' within the meaning of the Act."

Since the "collaborating" does not constitute "lobbying," CAPP is not in breach of the act, Odsen wrote.

He said when government initiates talks with an outside group, any discussion that takes place is not considered lobbying under Alberta's act. It is only lobbying when the outside group initiates talks.

Odsen's ruling echoes arguments made by CAPP's general counsel in a letter responding to the federation's allegations.

"It is plainly in the interest of Alberta and Albertans to correct ill-informed campaigns that are designed to discredit Alberta Energy and confuse the public so that the economic interests of Albertans are not unjustly injured," Nikol Schultz wrote.

"The (federation's) characterization of the process is highly inaccurate. Furthermore, AFL's actions in publicly releasing their letter suggest an agenda that focuses less on serving the public good or the real interests of Alberta workers than it does on attacking governments and industry."

The leaked cabinet documents first made headlines in August because they also suggest the province is worried environmental groups will undermine public support for shale gas development by spreading misinformation about health and environmental effects of chemical fracking.

"Shale gas environmental concerns in the media are potentially problematic for energy development and environmental management in Alberta," the briefing note says. "Several initiatives are underway by different groups within government and industry ... to address emerging issues and public interest concerns."

The documents were leaked to the NDP one week after federal documents obtained under access to information laws revealed CAPP helped organize the Alberta government's public relations strategy to polish the image of the oilsands.

Energy Department spokesman Bart Johnson said Monday it is not uncommon for government to work with stakeholders in areas of common interest, including public awareness campaigns and communications strategies.

"In this case, government discussed the possibility of a joint public awareness strategy with CAPP, but CAPP decided to pursue its own plan," Johnson said.

Edmonton Journal, Mon Nov 28 2011
Byline: Karen Kleiss

EDMONTON – The Alberta Federation of Labour congratulates Albertans involved in the growing Occupy movements for bringing issues of inequality in our wealthy province to greater public attention.

"Calls for fairness that started in New York very quickly took root in Alberta," says Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), which represents 145,000 workers. "The work of occupiers in Calgary and Edmonton are a sign that things are changing. These Albertans used peaceful and participatory democratic action to highlight issues that those in power would rather conveniently sweep under the rug."

McGowan contends that while a handful of conservative-minded elites have tried to pass of the occupation sites as unsightly, they were unsuccessful in asking Albertans to turn a blind eye to occupy protests.

"The occupation sites were vibrant reminders of deeper issues of economic inequality in Alberta. What is truly unsightly is the presence of a government that favours its corporate friends over the interests of all Albertans," adds McGowan.

McGowan sited income inequality, increasing child poverty rates, and generous corporate tax cuts amidst funding insecurity faced by the province's education system as indicators of skewed government priorities.

The AFL has continued to call attention to irresponsible provincial programs and earlier this year, demanded provincial accountability for its failed Drilling Stimulus programming. The stimulus gave away $2.9 billion of taxpayer money to pad private profits of oil and gas companies, while depleting our treasury of funds that could have been used to support health care and education.

"Albertans have witnessed great generosity for corporations, and yet working families are being asked to accept austerity. We sit amidst immense wealth, and the labour movement is working hard to make sure that wealth benefits all Albertans."

The AFL has issued ongoing solidarity statements with Albertans participating in the Occupy movement. Deep concern over issues such as income inequality, corporate influence over Alberta's democratic processes, and funding of public services are common ground between supporters of the Occupy movement and Alberta's labour unions.

"These kinds of issues could more easily fly under the radar of mainstream media. As we move forward, they are top-of-mind, thanks to Occupy protesters who braved the elements to get their message of democratic renewal heard. For that, we owe a debt of gratitude to Occupiers not only here in Alberta, but around the world."

"Occupiers' message and voices will continue inspire positive change in this province."

MEDIA CONTACT:

Gil McGowan, AFL president, 780-218-9888 (cell)

Alberta's Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday a Chinese company can be prosecuted for its role in the deaths of two temporary foreign workers in 2007.

Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Company Ltd. had claimed it shouldn't be involved in the trial also involving Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. and contractor SSEC Canada Ltd.

The companies face 53 charges in connection to the double fatality at CNRL's Horizon site, north of Fort McMurray on April 24, 2007. Hong Liang Liu, 33, an electrical engineer, and Genbao Ge, 27, a scaffolder, were killed when the roof of the oil tank they were working in collapsed.

Sinopec Shanghai had brought the workers into the country, but had argued it had no official presence here and that it was never properly served. However, several acts outlined in an earlier hearing helped link Sinopec Shanghai and SSEC.

"The next step is we go back to provincial court and we're going to be asking for Sinopec to be tried jointly with CNRL and SSEC Canada Ltd.," said Josh Stewart, Alberta Justice spokesman Thursday.

That court appearance will also seek approval to move ahead with the trial already scheduled for Oct. 1, 2012. It will be heard in a St. Albert courtroom.

"We can do it in absentia now," he added, if Sinopec fails to show up for court.

The companies were set to go to trial last month, but the court granted an adjournment requested by CNRL which had argued all three accused should stand trial together.

"The Crown objected and we asked that it go ahead on schedule as planned, but the judge ruled against the Crown and granted the adjournment," said David Dear of Alberta Justice at the time.

That appeal had been scheduled for Oct. 8.

Meanwhile, the Alberta Federation of Labour is applauding the court's ruling.

"(Wednesday's) ruling makes it clear that if international companies want to do business here, they have to not only respect our laws, but also be accountable when they violate them," said Gil McGowan, AFL president.

Though he applauded the decision, he admitted his organization is concerned the proceedings are taking so long. It's been over four years since the workers were killed.

"With one of the three court justices holding a dissenting position, there's a possibility that the company may seek to delay their day in court even longer," said McGowan. "It is incredibly frustrating and distressing that this company tried to dodge justice by dragging the process out as long as they have. We hope these workers' families will see justice as soon as possible."

Given the companies will be in court for trial more than five years after the accident, he said the delays make a mockery of the laws designed to protect workers.

Fort McMurray Today, Fri Nov 25 2011
Byline: Carol Christian

If you want a useful yardstick of the relative health of Alberta's opposition parties, you need look no further than the number of candidates they have nominated for the next provincial election.

Using this measure, it is very unlikely the increasingly marginalized Alberta Liberal Party under Leader Raj Sherman will be capable of fielding a full slate of candidates on election day.

There will be 87 seats in the provincial Legislature after the next election. Here is a prediction: The Liberals will be unable to field a slate of even two-thirds that number, and may only be able to find candidates for about half the seats in the Legislature.

This is not idle mean-spiritedness. It is a forecast based on the difficulty all Alberta opposition parties have finding and fielding candidates, and the number of candidates the parties have nominated to date -- with a general election possibly as close as three months away and certainly coming no later than six months from now.

Here are the nomination numbers for the three major opposition parties, which any sensible Alberta Liberal supporter must find deeply troubling:

New Democratic Party: 60

Wildrose Alliance: 58

Alberta Liberals: 19

Anyone who knows politics knows that while it may be possible to find warm bodies to fill out a slate of candidates, even for governing parties it is difficult to find good candidates with whom electors will be really thrilled. One needs only consider some of the lags in Premier Alison Redford's Progressive Conservative caucus to know the truth of this!

Nevertheless, obviously both the NDP and the Wildrose Party have been doing their work with commitment and seriousness and will have full slates ready to go whenever the writ is dropped. Only the Conservatives will know when that is, of course, because Premier Redford's "fixed election dates" law doesn't fix an election date. It does, however, set the three-month period in which the vote will fall, which is why we can be confident the Liberal nomination numbers are going to be a big problem for the party.

Lacking key political staff and watching their support sag, the Liberals would be in a more difficult position anyway than the NDP or the Wildrose Party, even if they had more candidates.

Nomination numbers are moving targets, naturally. Last night, New Democrats in Edmonton-Centre nominated Candidate No. 60, Nadine Bailey, a veteran campaigner who ran federally for the party in May in the nearby Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont riding. (She was also, I kid you not, nominated in the Canada's Sexiest Candidate contest started by a Toronto blogger who obviously had too much time on his hands.)

The NDP and Wildrose numbers tend to go back and forth as both parties proceed competently toward nomination of full slates. In fact, both will likely have 70 or more nominated within the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, the governing Conservatives, at 51 nominations, are a little behind, but given their position as Alberta's Natural Governing Party with a large elected caucus, they will have less trouble finding qualified candidates for the few ridings in which they don't already hold seats. The Alberta Party, which has never made it onto the province's political radar screen and is unlikely to do so now, has nominated only eight.

But while everyone else's numbers are building, the Liberals' tally stumbled backward Monday with the defection of Lethbridge-East MLA Bridget Pastoor to Premier Redford's Tories. This brought nominated Alberta Liberal candidates down from the 20 noted in Dave Cournoyer's useful Daveberta blog, consistently the best source on Alberta nomination tallies and names.

The loss of Pastoor comes on top of announcements by the backbone of the Liberal caucus -- experienced MLAs like former leadership candidate Edmonton-Gold Bar MLA Hugh MacDonald, former leader and Edmonton-Riverside MLA Kevin Taft and Calgary-Varsity's Harry Chase -- that they won't be seeking re-election. Another former potential Liberal leader, Dave Taylor, quit the caucus months ago and now sits as the Alberta Party's sole MLA. He too won't be running again in Calgary-Currie.

This collapse in MLA support is arguably even more serious to the Alberta Liberal Party's prospects than its decline in popular support as recorded by public opinion polls from better than a quarter of the Alberta electorate in the 2008 general election to somewhere between 11 and 15 per cent today.

As for the NDP and Wildrose Party, while they have similar numbers of candidates nominated and arguably possess similar levels of political skill, they cannot simply be considered interchangeable destinations for protest votes.

You can judge a party by its platform statements or by the people who support it. By either measure, the well-funded Wildrose Party is far to the right of the governing Conservatives. And never forget that despite Wildrose rhetoric to the contrary, Premier Redford and her Conservatives are pretty far to the right.

The Wildrose Party, led by former Fraser Institute functionary Danielle Smith, is dedicated to the proposition all government services ought to be privatized -- and that goes for particularly for the work done by the "publicly funded" public health system they promise to maintain with nuanced precision.

By contrast, the NDP led by Brian Mason is unabashedly a party of the progressive centre-left, committed to maintaining and improving publicly financed, publicly operated health care. (This is not something the Liberal leader, not so long ago the Conservative junior minister for health, can say!)

Mason earned his living doing a real job, driving a bus, before remaking himself as an effective Parliamentarian and legislative leader. With Edmonton-Strathcona MLA Rachel Notley, the small NDP caucus has consistently punched above their weight in Question Period.

With neither the Liberals nor the Alberta Party likely capable of nominating full slates of candidates, obviously the NDP is the only progressive opposition party where progressive voters can hope to get any impact with their votes.

Moreover, unlike some elections in the past, the NDP this time has been able to attract remarkably good candidates in all parts of the province. In addition to Ms. Bailey in Edmonton-Centre, there is five-term city councillor Lorna Watkins-Zimmer in Red Deer, Alberta Federation of Labour researcher Shannon Phillips in Lethbridge-West, and former councillor Wanda Laurin in Peace River.

In Edmonton, where the NDP enjoys a significant regional advantage, running ahead of all other opposition parties according to a recent Environics poll, there are candidates like Friends of Medicare Executive Director David Eggen in Edmonton-Calder, a former MLA, and teacher Deron Bilous in Edmonton-Beverly.

So, sorry, but by every measure, the future looks very bleak for the Alberta Liberals.

The Wildrose Alliance is a radical right-wing party that would lead Albertans down a dangerous path to wholesale privatization of public services.

In this election cycle in Alberta, the New Democrats are the only progressive party with enough momentum to have a meaningful impact in the next election.

rabble.ca, Fri Nov 25 2011

Renewed calls to process more bitumen in Alberta are following a delay in a proposed export pipeline even though the economic upside for upgrading plants in recent years has shrunk.

The push to encourage more processing of production from the province's vast bitumen resource into higher value light oil resurfaced this week in a debate among elected leaders, after the U.S. federal regulator deciding on a permit for the 830,000 barrel per day Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast indicated it won't budge on its additional year or more of study.

The heightened pressure on lawmakers to get more revenue for Alberta's bitumen follows recent calls to address a predicted decline in synthetic oil produced in the province, as a percentage of total bitumen output. The Energy Resources Conservation Board predicts 47 per cent of bitumen produced in the province in 2020 will be upgraded to light oil, down from 58 per cent in 2010. In 2008, the province had set a goal of 66 per cent. The regulator's summer forecast had some eyeing jobs and tax revenue attached to additional upgraders crying out for government action.

Energy Minister Ted Morton told an energy conference in Calgary this week there has been "heated" discussion on the issue in caucus since the Keystone XL delay and there are some "enthusiasts" in cabinet backing support for more upgrading, but that he isn't one of them.

Morton's view is that the economics for upgrading aren't certain and seem to change like the weather in Alberta, "every month or two," as he told an audience at the 2011 Calgary Energy Roundtable on Tuesday. Industry observers confirmed a confluence of factors make building a multibilliondollar upgrader riskier now than a few years ago.

Between 2004 and 2006, energy companies could earn 20 to 25 per cent more on each barrel of bitumen produced in Alberta by processing it into synthetic oil at an upgrader, said Kam Sandhar of investment bank Peters & Co. Today, a barrel of bitumen is only fetching 10 per cent less on markets than a barrel of synthetic crude.

A pair of new pipelines came online in 2010 to bring bitumen south to facilities that can handle the heavy oil, which lifted the price, Sandhar explained.

"What's changed between now and then is there's more take-away capacity to the Midwest, there's more coking capacity in the Midwest, which has essentially grown the market for heavy oil," Sandhar said.

While existing upgraders in Alberta are making money, Sandhar said, it's hard to justify new projects given that labour costs and supply chain costs have risen - including loftier steel prices. Expansion of oilsands mining and in situ bitumen production, expected to double from about 1.5 million barrels per day by 2020, means competition for workers in northern Alberta is fierce - which ratchets up wages, he said.

"Let's assume you heard somebody say tomorrow, 'There are two new upgraders being built,' " Sandhar said. "It's not doable."

The oilpatch is "clearly" supportive of doing upgrading in Alberta, said Greg Stringham, a vice-president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

There are five upgraders operating in Alberta with capacity to process more than 1.2 million bpd, and a few more planned. North West Upgrading Inc. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. are pitching a three-phase project starting in 2014 to cost $15 billion and amount to 150,000 bpd, with a bitumen supply commitment from the government. The proposed Voyageur upgrader by Suncor Energy Inc. and Total S.A. is projected to add 200,000 barrels per day in 2016. CNRL has said it would add to its existing Horizon upgrader facility, as long as cost inflation isn't too high, and Nexen Inc. has publicly mused about an upgrader expansion at its Long Lake in situ oilsands project.

Stringham said U.S. Gulf Coast refiners that can take in Canadian heavy oil have existing contracts soon expiring with suppliers from Venezuela and Mexico and are willing to pay more.

"So that's what you're competing against," Stringham said. Assuming Keystone XL gets built to supply those refineries, he said, that demand will be satisfied.

The Alberta Federation of Labour has long bemoaned export pipelines for allowing value-added jobs to flow "down the pipeline," the group's president, Gil McGowan, said. Even worse, McGowan argued, is that pipelines leaving Alberta have contributed to the thinner profit margins upgrading projects could potentially earn by inflating heavy oil prices, leaving those profit spreads for refineries in Illinois to enjoy.

University of Alberta business professor Andrew Leach said the effect of pipelines on the economics of upgrading isn't so simple, since pipelines would also be needed to export new synthetic crude.

"Even if you are running 100 per cent synthetic in the province, you'd still want access to Gulf Coast or West Coast markets," Leach said.

Calgary Herald, Thurs Nov 24 2011
Byline: Rebecca Penty

Chinese engineering, procurement, and construction management company Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Company (SSEC) could face charges in a Canadian court after a decision handed down yesterday by the Alberta Court of Appeal.

In a decision released yesterday, the court found that SSEC could be held accountable for the deaths in 2007 of two temporary foreign workers at the Horizon Oil Sands project in northern Alberta, operated by Canadian Natural Resources.

The Canadian company is due to face court over the matter in 2012, but SSEC had argued that it did not come under the jurisdiction of the Alberta court as it had no official presence in the nation or any Canadian employees.

The Appeal court's decision upheld a previous ruling finding that this was not the case.

Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan applauded the decision in a statement.

"Today's ruling makes it clear that if international companies want to do business here, they have to not only respect our laws, but also be accountable when they violate them," McGowan said.

"It is incredibly frustrating and distressing that this company tried to dodge justice by dragging the process out as long as they have. We hope these workers' families will see justice as soon as possible."

upstreamonline.ca, Thurs Nov 24 2011

AFL applauds court decision to hold Chinese firm to account for workers' deaths

EDMONTON – The Alberta Federation of Labour applauds the Alberta Court of Appeal's decision to uphold a ruling that Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Co. can be prosecuted for the deaths of two oil sands workers.

"Today's ruling makes it clear that if international companies want to do business here, they have to not only respect our laws, but also be accountable when they violate them," says Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), which represents 145,000 workers.

"Although we applaud today's decision, we're troubled that court proceedings have taken this long," says McGowan, noting that the two workers were killed over four years ago in April 2007. "With one of the three court justices holding a dissenting position, there's a possibility that the company may seek to delay their day in court even longer."

"It is incredibly frustrating and distressing that this company tried to dodge justice by dragging the process out as long as they have. We hope these workers' families will see justice as soon as possible."

"The other company involved in these workers' deaths, Canadian Natural Resources, is due to go on trial in the fall of 2012, more than five years after the accident. These delays are totally unacceptable and make a mockery of laws designed to protect workers."

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MEDIA CONTACT:

Gil McGowan, AFL president, 780-218-9888 (cell)

EDMONTON - In a decision released Wednesday, the Alberta Court of Appeal has decided that a Chinese corporation can face charges in Alberta court for the 2005 death of two temporary foreign workers in northern Alberta.

The decision upholds a previous ruling that Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Company Ltd. can be prosecuted. The two men worked for the company.

The company had argued that since it has no official presence in Alberta or Canada, and no Canadian employees, it could not be included in the jurisdiction of an Alberta courtroom.

On April 24, 2007, the internal supports of a large tank collapsed, killing Hongliang Liu from China's Shandong province and Genbao Ge, from the Henan province. The men were in Canada on temporary foreign-worker permits and worked at the Horizon Oil Sands project near Fort McKay.

In April 2009, the Alberta government laid 53 Occupational Health and Safety Act charges in connection with the incident. While most were laid against Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., 10 were laid against Sinopec Shanghai.

CNRL will be in court in the fall of 2012.

In the Alberta Court of Appeal decision, two judges upheld the ruling, while a third offered a dissenting opinion.

The Alberta Federation of Labour applauded the decision.

"If companies like Sinopec are going to invest in the oilsands, they need to respect our laws," said AFL president Gil McGowan.

Edmonton Journal, Wed Nov 23 2011

EDMONTON _ A unit of a giant Chinese petrochemical corporation can face trial on safety charges in the deaths of two oilsands workers.

The Alberta Court of Appeal has upheld a ruling that Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Co. can be prosecuted under the Health and Safety Act.

The court also ruled Wednesday that the Crown can apply to hold a trial on the charges under the Criminal Code if Sinopec Shanghai does not show up in court.

The two temporary workers from China were killed on April 24, 2007, when a storage tank collapsed at Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.´s (TSX:CNQ) Horizon project near Fort McMurray.

Sinopec Shanghai, which brought the workers to Alberta, argued it has no official presence in Canada and was never properly served with legal documents.

One of the three Appeal Court justices wrote a dissenting opinion, so the company may seek leave to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Canadian Natural Resources and SSEC Canada, which is 90 per cent owned by Sinopec, are to go to trial on 53 charges next October _ more than five years after the workers died.

Josh Stewart, an Alberta Justice Department official, said the Appeal Court ruling means the Crown will apply to prosecute the three companies together.

"The Crown will be returning to provincial court and we will be asking for Sinopec Shanghai Engineering to be tried jointly with CNRL and SSEC Canada Ltd. on the information that is presently scheduled for trial in October 2012," he said.

Sinopec Shanghai officials were not available for comment. Officials with Canadian Natural Resources, which wanted Sinopec included in the case, declined to comment on the ruling.

Court documents show Sinopec repeatedly missed court appearances on the charges in 2009. An official with SSEC Canada was eventually served a summons to appear. Sinopec hired a lawyer and began arguing it should not be included in the case.

A provincial court judge ruled last year in Sinopec´s favour, but the Crown successfully challenged that ruling in Court of Queen´s Bench.

The Alberta Federation of Labour and the Christian Labour Relations Association have been critical of the long delay in prosecuting the case.

Federation president Gil McGowan said Alberta is preparing for another influx of temporary foreign workers, including some from China. He said the government would learn lessons from the case that could prevent similar deaths in the future.

Companies owned by the Chinese government are major players in Canada´s energy industry with $11 billion in investments in the last two years.

Units of Sinopec have spent more than $7 billion in Alberta since 2009. The deals include the recent purchase of Daylight Energy Ltd., and major stakes in oilsands projects such as Syncrude and Total E&P Canada´s Northern Lights.

Last summer, state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp. announced a $2.1-billion deal to buy OPTI Canada Inc., an Alberta oilsands company. In 2009, PetroChina announced it was spending $1.9 billion to buy into the Athabasca Oil Sands Corp.

Oilweek, Wed Nov 23 2011

Pensions legislation being introduced by the Harper government today (Thursday) will reward Tory friends in the financial services industry, but do nothing to help Canadians facing a looming retirement crisis, says Alberta's largest labour group.

"This is Harper once again putting corporate profits ahead of Canadian people. The Pooled Retirement Pension Plan (PRPP) is another giveaway to the financial services industry – it's just one more product they can sell to working Canadians while continuing to charge outrageous service fees," says Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, which represents 145,000 workers.

"The Harper pension plan will do nothing to help Canadians facing a retirement-income crisis. Using PRPPs is like trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt gun. They are nothing more than glorified Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs) – and the recent global recession taught us how flawed and flimsy they are," he says.

McGowan says PRPPs fall far short of what working Canadians need on multiple grounds.

•  They are not mandatory: Like RRSPs, only those with higher incomes will be able to buy them. Only 38 per cent of Albertans contributed to an RRSP in 2008, and the median contribution was only $3,200 per year. More than 60 per cent of all RRSP contributions come from people with annual incomes of more than $80,000. Only mandatory plans are effective at helping lower-income earners save for their retirement.
• Employers do not contribute: Without matching employer contributions, the PRPP is a glorified savings plan – one that those on lower incomes cannot afford.
• They are not defined benefit plans: Defined benefit plans like the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) provide security by guaranteeing retirement income based on how much has been contributed over a working lifetime. Defined contribution plans, such as PRPPs, means the entire risk of market fluctuations is borne by the individual. Retire during a market slump and you could spend the rest of your life in poverty.
• PRPPS are run by banks and financial institutions: The financial services industry has a history of charging outrageously high fees in Canada, about five times higher than CPP.

"Eight out of 10 provinces backed a plan for a modest expansion of CPP as the best way to tackle the retirement-income crisis. They were supported by economists, pension experts and 78 per cent of Canadians, according to an Environics poll. It's time for Harper to start listening to Canadians, but it seems he only has ears for his corporate friends," says McGowan.

"When the federal government abandoned CPP expansion in December 2010, Harper's excuse was that the fragile economy meant was 'now is not the time.' If timing is the only issue, we call on Harper to commit to CPP expansion when the economy is stronger, when he has eliminated the deficit. There will be no excuse to betray Canadians again."

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MEDIA CONTACT:

Gil McGowan, AFL president, 780-218-9888 (cell)