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Earlier this week, a number of Alberta’s union bosses attempted to portray the provincial government’s recent pension plan proposals as “an attack on the pension security of hundreds of thousands of Albertans.”

This is absolute nonsense and I want to set the record straight.

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As part of Budget 2019, the government of Alberta has made the Alberta Investment Management Corp. (AIMCo) the investment manager of all public sector pensions, including the Alberta Teachers’ Retirement Fund. The fact is, AIMCo was already managing every public sector pension fund except the ATRF. We are keeping the investments within AIMCo for the long term. It is curious that union leaders whose investments are currently managed by AIMCo would be concerned.

AIMCo has earned its reputation as a world-class investment manager, with $108 billion under management. It is, among other things, the investment manager of Alberta’s Heritage Trust Fund. And it regularly achieves spectacular investment performance — over the past 10 years, AIMCo has provided an annual return of 9.9 per cent on Albertans’ investments. That might be reason enough to move Alberta’s public sector pension plan investments to AIMCo. But the case is, in fact, better than that.