Five more months of full Canadian pension

My Canadian pension check for April 2010 was deposited in full (after tax) into my bank account. That was a relief given all the debate and discussion on the Canadian Settlement over the last couple of months. Now I can look forward to five more months of pension payments until the plan is wound up September 30th.

In the mean time I hope that our lawyers, Koskie Minsky, and the NRPC are working with Nortel and the Ontario administrator to determine more detail on the transition, and to explain to us all what the impact will be. We are all concerned with the trust fund solvency ratio and want to know about that as soon as possible. It won't be well received if we don't find out about that until October 1st. Knowing what the reduction on our pensions will be is very important to us all, and at this point we only have an estimated year old figure which is close to a guess.

In the last K.M. FAQ document they said that the fund is now 30% in stocks and 70% in bonds. I hope that there are well informed people looking after the fund since the bond market may now be reaching a peak and could face a bubble situation like stocks did in 2008. Since it's our money, I would like to see some better method of control that would give us updates and explanations of how this money is being invested and distributed.

For those of us who worked in multiple provinces and are living outside Canada, there are other implications which we need additional definition on. Will the Ontario Pension Insurance apply to us, even if partially, and if so how much? Will we be able to take advantage of the Quebec approach to orphan pension funds if Ontario does not implement such a process? Will there be any impact on us by the CRA review of pension calculation methods using foreign service? We are left hanging with all these questions and have only received fluffy answers so far. I hope that there is some more clarity soon so that we can at least move forward with informed concern rather than worries about the unknown.