Some More Of My Stories for You

There is not too much new and exciting going on for me these days. When the weather starts getting too warm as it is now, I do not go out as much as I did before in the spring and want to do over the next few months.

Of course, I will go out as many times I can during the day both so that I can enjoy all that I see and for my required physical exercising to help me keep better. Unfortunately, as the days get warmer, I only can go out for a long walk early in the morning and in an area where there is a lot of tree coverage so I can eliminate as much of the sun as I can. Who wants to get sunburned! I will go out much later in the daytime when the sun goes down a bit but I do not walk the same amount of distance as I did before. Again, it is just too warm to go as far.

Here are some stories that I found. Since I'm not going to be outside watching as much, I figured that I might as well let you know about some of the things about which I am thinking.

INVESTIGATING THE WINDSOR POLICE

Wow, this is quite a story that I read in the Windsor media:

"The Windsor Police Service is under investigation by the Ontario Civilian Police Commission.

According to the commission from January 2018 to April 2018 they received multiple complaints from members of the Windsor Police Service. These complaints “raise serious concerns about the workplace environment of the WPS, the administration of the WPS, and the oversight provided by the Windsor Police Services Board.” (Windsorite.ca, June 13, 2018) 

It is quite an event for the Police Department considering this:

“May 4th, 2018, the Commission decided to conduct an investigation.”

Unfortunately, we are not provided with any information that specifically tells us what this is all about. That does not make this investigation helpful at all for us to know what is involved.

We will just have to wait and see what happens and what the results are. Hopefully, decisions will be made and publicized before our elections in the fall. Who knows who is part of this matter.

CONDO LANDSCAPING

Here are before and after pictures of the front of my Conduit in Tecumseh.

When you look at Photo One, above you will see how overgrown trees and shrubs were at the time. The photo was taken relatively recently after the plants had grown quite substantially since the wintertime.

Photo Two is the magnificent work that our Landscaping Company did to fix up not only my property but all of the properties in the Condo Centre where I live and also all the properties across the street in another Condo Corporation.

Their staff members who work on our site are excellent. They do such a good job not only every week when they come here to do the usual tasks but every time they undertake additional work to make our site looks so nice.

OMERS PENSION PLAN

I wonder how good, or bad, the OMERS pension plan is financially these days.

I can recall a number of years ago when OMERS had financial difficulties because the stock market did very poorly. The share valuation of its investments decreased significantly so that OMERS had to take steps to try to increase valuation over time so that pension holders would receive the full amount of the pension funds when they retired.

I think the stock market has done fairly well over the last few years. If you will recall, the stock markets in both Canada and United States have hit stock market high records in the last little while. Perhaps, this is why the Union President who is involved in pension plan matters made the following comments:

“The OMERS pension plan is in good shape financially and will ensure a dignified retirement for the hundreds of thousands of Ontarians who’ve paid into it throughout their working careers,” said Warren Thomas, the union’s president, in a press release.

“We don’t see any good reason to scale back the size of peoples’ pensions or to increase the amount that people pay in. We’ll fight any proposal to do either.” (Martha Porado, BenefitsCanada.com, June 14, 2018) 

One would think that the people involved on the Government side of this matter would be so pleased about how well the Pension Plan has done and would take a lot of the credit for the improvement. Unfortunately, that has not happened. The Chief executive officer of the OMERS’ sponsors corporation made the following comment:

“It’s about modernizing the plan to the extent that we can, ensuring in the process that it remains sustainable, meaningful and affordable for all the stakeholders, whether they be employers or members, both current and future,” he says.

While the short-term returns for the plan look good, there’s more to the picture of the plan’s health, says Harrietha. “The plan is currently in a deficit situation, so despite these short-term results, we still have a deficit after the 2008 financial crisis. We’re not fully recovered.”

In fact, the situation could be horrible if one believes this:

“Rigorous actuarial modelling shows the cost of the plan will continue to rise over time and the required contribution levels both from members and employers would eventually increase beyond reasonable levels, says Harrietha.”

I have not got the faintest idea who is right or wrong in this matter. Could it mean that employees will be demanding much higher wages in the future so that they can afford to pay the higher pension rates so that their Pension Plan payments will remain as high as they all expect them to be.

One might want to consider whether this matter may become an issue that will be required to be discussed when the employees' employment contract with the Government has to be renegotiated. Could it be something that could lead to a strike in the future?