Slow Government

From the G & M:

"Cheque backlogs delay Canadian reservists’ pension payouts"

 

Doug Jost was warned to put three months worth of paycheques into a savings account before he retired last June from his job as a full-time reservist with the Royal Canadian Navy. Defence Department bureaucrats told him it could take up to 12 weeks to collect his first pension cheque. More than six months later, as he contemplates the looming possibility of bankruptcy and the fact that he cannot provide for his school-aged children, Mr. Jost says he wishes the 12-week prediction had proved true. The 48-year-old former lieutenant – who spent 25 years in the Navy, some of them with the reserves and some with the regular force – has yet to receive his first pension cheque. “I guess I can hang on another month or so,” Mr. Jost said. But “I am in quite a precarious financial situation.”

Mr. Jost acknowledges that he is a young retiree. But he said he found the morale in the Navy slipping in recent years and, after a quarter century of military life, he figured it was time to move on. The fact that he was entitled to a pension made his decision easy. The Auditor-General examined the Reserve Force Pension Plan in 2011, four years after it was first introduced, and found that it had been implemented without adequate planning. That created significant backlogs, the Auditor-General said, both in the processing of the claims of retired reservists and in determining how much each one would be required to pay – to compensate for the years before the pension plan came into effect and contributions were not being made. Despite promises by DND that more staff would be hired to deal with the problems, the Defence ombudsman says excessive delays in the processing of reservists’ pensions persist. “Although the department has made improvements in this matter, we have been and remain concerned for the well-being of our constituents,” the ombudsman’s office said Friday. “This office continues to monitor the situation and is aware it remains an issue. We have recently requested an update from the Canadian Armed Forces.” DND officials said in an e-mail on Friday that the department has addressed many of the issues highlighted in the Auditor-General’s report, including hiring new staff. “There are very good reasons for Mr. Jost’s pension to be delayed,” they said. “Mr. Jost is aware of these reasons. Due to privacy concerns, we cannot discuss any details of his particular case.” But Mr. Jost said there are no special circumstances about his case – other than the fact that he was a reservist – that would cause his pension cheque to be delayed. It took 3 1/2 months for the Defence Department to audit his file, he said, and it wasn’t until October that he was told how much he owed for the years before 2007 when the plan was not in effect and he was not paying into it. The department would not start to calculate that amount until after he had retired, Mr. Jost said. Had Mr. Jost retired from another government department, he would likely have received his first payment by mid-summer. According to the Department of Public Works, the standard for getting a first pension cheque to a retired member of the public service is 30 to 45 days, and that standard is met 97 per cent of the time. Irene Mathyssen, the NDP critic for veterans’ affairs, said Mr. Jost’s situation is too common among reservists and it is time for the Liberal government – which is aware of both the Auditor-General’s report and the concerns of the Defence ombudsman – to do something about it. “For someone to try to scramble on nothing for six months is just not acceptable,” Ms. Mathyssen said. “It’s been my experience that kids don’t give up eating for six months. They get very cranky about that.”

 

 

^ Doing things in a timely manner seems to be the Canadian Governments greatest failure (whether they are Liberal or Conservative.) Several years ago Canada finally changed its citizenship laws that stole Canadian citizenship from Canadians that lived outside of Canada for a certain period of time  up to 1977 and gave it back to them and their descendants (up to 1 generation born outside of Canada.) I applied to have my Canadian citizenship restored to me and it took the Department in Sydney, Nova Scotia 4 months to even look at my application for a certificate proving I was a Canadian born outside of Canada (rather than a naturalized Canadian) and then another 8 months to get the little card proving it despite the fact that they had all the details and documents and needed no extra items from me. I couldn't get a Canadian Passport or SIN without first getting the Citizenship Card and that is just too long to wait when there's no issues on my end. Canada is such a small country (population-wise) and there's no excuse to make anyone wait months or years for these kinds of things. These delays are caused by a lack of trained personnel, good laws and regulations and an arrogance that they (the Government officials) have the power to make us meager citizens wait and so they make us make. It's pretty pathetic in the 2nd decade of the 21st Century that the Canadian Government continues to operate in the same way the rest of the world did back in the 1980s-1990s. ^

 

 

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/cheque-backlogs-delay-reservists-pension-payouts/article28095542/