September 29, 2003
While the world waits to see the kind of Prime Minister Paul Martin will be, bus drivers of Voyageur Colonial Bus Lines already have an inkling.
While Paulie’s been playing coy about his intentions for Canada, bus drivers have been protesting on Parliament Hill. While many average Canadians wonder what’s in store when Martin’s in the PMO, the bus drivers are demanding to know what happened to their pensions.
When their company was sold in 1996 by CSL Equity Investments Inc., their pension fund was short by $2.4 million, and up to 234 long-term employees lost 30 percent of their pensions. This was no ordinary company. It was half-owned by Paul Martin.
But the story doesn’t end there.
Voyageur employees sent a petition requesting that the responsible federal agency, a branch of the Department of Finance, do an audit of their pension fund. This was done, but then the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) held a secret meeting with the trustees of the fund--afterward asking the independent auditor to change its own audit. Incredibly, it then wrote to the pensioners saying that it would take no further action.
"This was no small deal," says MP Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance Senior Finance Critic. "This was the first failure of a federally-supervised pension plan involving significant losses to individuals. How then, could OSFI ask that the independent audit be amended? How could the national regulator let the pension fund of the Martin company go millions into deficit?
"Maybe the direct involvement of Martin’s political staff on the file helped. Documents show that his chief of staff was directly informed on the file by OSFI’s Deputy Superintendent. Martin’s own Ontario campaign organizer even sat in on related meetings. OSFI wrote several "communication packages" for 'selected MPs on request.’ Martin’s fingerprints are all over this one, yet last week he shed crocodile tears, calling the situation "a tragedy".
Martin, made phenomenally wealthy by the favours of influential Pooh-Bahs, including UN poster boy Maurice Strong, needs to pay more than lip service to his former hard-working employees.
So, as Paul Martin prepares for his mid-November Liberal love-in, the Voyageur employees would like to know why they are spending their reduced pensions on lawyers’ fees.
Monte Solberg would like to know too. That’s why he’s calling for a new audit and a complete review of OSFI’s decisions, as well as the involvement of the Minister’s political staff on the file.
That’s why he’s asking Paul Martin, after seven years of inaction, to make it up to his pensioners.
And that’s why Canadians should question the sincerity of the man who would allow this tragedy to happen to his own employees.
How about it, Mr. Martin?