Your pension is yours. At least it used to be, until the UCP got involved.

For decades, teachers’ pensions were managed by the Alberta Teachers Retirement Fund (ATRF), which generated exceptional returns on nearly $20 billion worth of investments. But in 2019, with no mandate and no consultation, the UCP forced 84,000 current and retired teachers to move their pensions to AIMCo.

Adding insult to injury, they dismantled joint governance, prevented all public sector pension plans from leaving AIMCo, and used a ministerial order to impose their own investments management agreement, removing teachers’ control over their pensions.

Teachers are right to be furious. Their pensions are not political playthings: they are an investment in retirement security.

Rachel Notley and the Alberta NDP will put this retirement security at the centre of our pensions policies.

We will return to a joint-governance model for public pensions, because teachers must have a say over how their own pensions are governed.

We will also give teachers the ability to leave AIMCo if performance is unsatisfactory, and – crucially – we will remove the Finance Minister’s power to direct investment decisions at AIMCo.

Teachers deserve to have a government they can trust to protect their financial futures. With Rachel Notley and the Alberta NDP, that’s exactly what they’ll get.