Patricia McCardle welcomed everyone to the meeting. She introduced the Executive.
The Agenda was approved as circulated with greetings from PEITF President Gilles Arsenault moved to the morning.
Moved by Eric Gallant and seconded by James MacAulay that the minutes of the November 8, 2012 PEIRTA AGM be approved.
Motion Carried
Business Arising from the minutes: No business arising.
Correspondence: No correspondence to report.
Treasurer’s Report: Balance October 31, 2012: $4,267.76
Income: $24,184.93
Expenses: $18,062.68
Balance: $6,122.25
Moved by Ann Ledgerwood and seconded by Allan Graham that the November 7, 2013 Financial Statement be approved.
Motion Carried
A detailed Financial Statement to November 7, 2013 is attached as Appendix 2 to these minutes.
President’s Report: President Patricia McCardle’s Report was presented and is attached as Appendix 1 to these minutes.
PEITF President Report: PEITF President Gilles Arsenault addressed the meeting and brought greetings from PEITF. He reported that PEITF had a busy year with
serious issues, including:
• Negotiating a new contract for teachers.
• Including substitute teachers in their membership.
• Review of the pension plan.
• Hosted many events.
• Added professional staff.
• Maintaining fourteen standing committees on a regular basis.
Gilles thanked the PEIRTA for their contributions over the year.
Nomination Report: James MacAulay submitted the Nomination Report as follows:
President – Sheridyth MacNeill
Vice President – Joyce McCardle
Treasurer – Anne Ledgerwood
Secretary – Ernestine Arnold
Past President – Patricia McCardle
Moved by James MacAulay and seconded by Eric Gallant that the nomination report be accepted.
Motion Carried
Group Insurance: Kimball Blanchard updated the membership on the Group Insurance Plan. Highlights are as follows:
• Program is going very well.
• Life insurance premiums remained unchanged for several years.
• Health insurance premiums have dropped over the last few years with coverage adjustments.
• Members are invited to question the committee on any issue.
• No response from Government on the first-payer issue, which presently is DECAP. If Government goes ahead with private plans being the first-payer,
the cost would be $1500-$1700 annually to members. Options would be to raise premiums or discontinue the private plan when member reaches 65 years of age.
Still waiting for response from Government.
Newsletter Report: Marg Stewart reported that three newsletters annually are published.
Membership Report: Joyce McCardle stated that there are 1528 retired teachers in PEI, of which 1007 are members. Her detailed report is attached as Appendix 4 to these minutes.
ACER-CART Report: James MacAulay, ACER-CART’s Eastern representative explained the role of ACER-CART. There are thirteen retired teachers’ organizations, representing 130,000 retired teachers. ACER-CART is nationally registered, giving the group the ability to make presentations to government. The PEIRTA membership fee is $0.35 per teacher per year. They meet once a year in Ottawa along with three conference calls. ACER-CART gives a perspective of happenings across the country. Health and pensions are the top two topics at the meetings. ACER-CART supports the Federal Government to maintain a national health care program.
Memorial for deceased members: Sheridyth MacNeill lead the service:
Deceased
Mirian Bell | Flowers carried by
Phyllis McCabe |
Pharmacist Presentation: Ann Cairns of Sherwood Drug Mart gave an extensive presentation on the how to best use your pharmacist for health care.
Lunch break
Greetings from PEI Seniors’ Federation: Sr. Norma Gallant, President of the PEI Seniors’ Federation, offered greetings from her board of directors. She spoke of similar concerns that her Board has with PEIRTA. She extended congratulations to PEIRTA for their work and invited on new president to the PEI Seniors’ Federation AGM in May, 2014.
Teachers’ Superannuation Plan: Changes to the Teachers’ Superannuation Plan-Retiree Presentation was presented by Hon. Wes Sheridan. He rationalized the reasons for the upcoming changes to the Pension Fund. He gave detail extensive changes to the fund.
Master Trust Fund: Michel Plamondon updated the membership on the Master Trust Fund.
Pension Committee: John Rowe reported that Michel Plamondon and Hon. Wes Sheridan’s reports covered all information required.
Resolutions: Whereas: the editor puts in many hours preparing the newsletter of members for a small remuneration, be it resolved that the honorarium for the newsletter editor be raised from $500/year to $750/year. Motion Carried
2014 Financial Statement: Presentation of the 2013 Financial Statement: Moved by Ann Ledgerwood and seconded by Helene Garg that the 2012 Financial Statement attached as Appendix 2 to these minutes be approved. Motion Carried
The 2013-2014 proposed Financial Budget was approved and is attached as Appendix 3 to these minutes.
Election of 2014-2016 executive: The 2014-2016 executive was declared as follows:
President – Sheridyth MacNeill
Vice President – Joyce McCardle
Treasurer – Anne Ledgerwood
Secretary – Ernestine Arnold
Past President – Patricia McCardle
Adjournment
Appendix 1
PRESIDENT’S REPORT
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND RETIRED TEACHERS’ ASSOCIATION
NOVEMBER 07. 2013 Rodd Royalty, Charlottetown
Let me begin by expressing my appreciation for the privilege of serving as president of The Prince Edward Island Retired Teachers’ Association for the past 2 years. It certainly kept me busy with not only the regular work, but several unexpected tasks, as well. Many schools across the Island have a tradition where the retired teachers get together on a fairly regular basis for breakfast or lunch. In my term as president, I began the practise of meeting with these groups. This was one of the things I most enjoyed in my role. These meetings served two purposes: First, I met and talked with many retirees like myself and answered questions about pension, insurance and more, and second and also important was the fact that my dislike of cooking was taken care of for that breakfast or lunch.
I have written more letters to MPs. MLAs and Mr Harper over the 2 years than I would have imagined. The chance to meet members from across Canada at ACER-CART was very interesting and informative; I met many great people. As the PEITF president can tell you, the members from other provinces are always shocked that not only are we able to get in to see our MLA’s and MP’s, but that we can do it very quickly.
We have six standing committees: health insurance, pension, membership, webmaster, newsletter editor, and nomination. These committees are very active and keep the executive updated with necessary information. A little later in the meeting the chairperson of each committee will report on the activities of each committee. Thus I will not be covering any of their report areas.
As I indicated in the newsletter, James MacAulay was elected to the ACER-CART executive as East Rep. for the next year. This includes the Atlantic Provinces and Quebec. He will be giving a report later in the agenda.
The Executive meets eight times during the year; we do not meet in May, July, August and November. Since I travel whenever the opportunity arises, it makes for some date juggling sometimes. It was a little easier this past year since my traveling companions were unable to travel. The monthly meetings are usually quite standard with interesting groups sometimes doing short presentations to get an article on our web page or in the newsletter.
A big thank you to PEITF who supports us so strongly. They treat us so well that we think we belong in the building! We hold our meetings in their building; we use their address as ours; we keep our file cabinet there with past notes and minutes in it. They support us with a $1500 annual donation. The secretarial staff Marion, Lisa and Sheila are the very best to work with. Michel and the rest of the professional staff are always willing to help in any way they can. This year we had more questions for Michel with all the publicity on health insurance and pensions.
The other group to give us support is Johnson Inc.; Dale Weldon, in the Fredericton office will be our new Rep. Sheridyth, Jim and I had a meeting with Dale in June, and he gave us their full support by continuing the annual donation of $4500 to our budget. They also have our newsletter’s labels printed, and donate a prize to each social and to this meeting. Welcome Dale.
We are invited to the Western School Board retirement dinner each year. This year ended an era since there will now be only one English Board. Since I was out of the province Ann Ledgerwood represented us at the gathering. She was surprised to meet several people she knew from her career. I also attended the PEITF pre-retirement sessions and their lunch at the annual meeting.
We held the three county socials in May. A lunch and some short talks were enjoyed by all who attended each gathering. The people who attend say they enjoy meeting other retirees for a chat and getting a chance to have questions answered. The Executive had a great discussion after May about how we can increase attendance; again this year, we only had about 25 members at each social (and that’s including the 8 executive members). We know we have to have something at this time because our county Reps are elected at this event. So far, we have not come up with anything more enticing. I was hoping by attending the retiree lunches that I could drum up some more people; it didn’t happen. If any of you have any ideas please forward them to someone on the executive. The county rep. does the work for the socials and would certainly like to see more join us.
I have met with many groups and individuals over the past year; some of these groups/individuals I will mention here:
• We were asked by ACER-CART to take part in several projects. One was to write to our MPs on the Canada Health Act. We decided since it was possible to meet each one personally, this was the route to take. I attempted to set up meeting times in June. Our concern was with funding becoming by per capita for Health in 2016. Either Sheridyth or Jim came with me to meet the MP’s. We met with Sean Casey and Wayne Easter very quickly and were also able to meet with Dr Hedy Fry, the liberal heath critic. Due to prior commitments and scheduling, it took a bit longer to set up appointments with Hon. Gail Shea and Lawrence MacAulay. These meetings finally happened in October. All were aware of the problems that will be created if funding goes to per capita in 2016. All were very concerned but had no definite solution.
• I also sent a letter to Hon. Doug Currie and Steven Myers and requested a meeting. Kimball, Jim, Michel and I met with Mr Currie in Oct. Kimball will review this meeting with you.
• I requested a meeting with Hon. Wes Sheridan just before the news on Pension changes was made public. Jim, Ann and I met with him and his deputy, David Arsenault. Hon. Sheridan will be here this afternoon to enlighten you on this action.
• I started looking into other unions (UPSE, CUPE, Nurses, and UPEI) to see if there were other retiree groups. There were two reasons I was looking for
this information:
1) We wanted to see how they educated their members on the DCAP program. And
2) If there were other groups, could we work together to support a common visit to Government? The only one with several small informal groups was USPE.
Kimball and I met with one UPSE group on Health Insurance practice and found out they understood very little about it. This was no help. UPEI at least knew what
we were talking about and they said we were doing much more than they were on educating our members on DCAP.
Our $500 UPEI Education Prize was awarded to Randy Bryne in May. Our $1000 Education Scholarship to a second year student was awarded to Nick Ramsay in October. Our $300 Holland College bursary to a second year student of the Early Childhood Care & Education Program was awarded to Chantelle Stewart.
We will have a short presentation by Pharmacist, Ann Cairns on medication do and don’ts. We don’t usually have two guest speakers, but at our meeting with Hon. Wes Sheridan on the pension issue, he agreed to speak to our group. Both of these speakers have valuable information for you.
In closing let me say that I look forward to a good meeting today. It is really a pleasure to work with an executive and chairs who take their roles so seriously. For me, it has been a great growing experience; I have learned new things with my participation in each event (some of which I was forced into).
Although I thoroughly enjoyed meeting and chatting with fellow retirees, I have to say the writing of articles for newsletters and PEITF newsletter were not my very favourite pastimes. I hope that when you leave today you will be able to say that you gained some new insights.
Thank You
Patricia McCardle
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Appendix 2
RETIRED TEACHERS’ FINANCIAL STATEMENT, NOVEMBER 7, 2013
Balance October 31, 2012
INCOME: | $ 4267.76
|
|
TOTAL INCOME – TOTAL EXPENSES: ($24,184.93 - $18,062.68 = $6,122.25) BALANCE:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Appendix 3
PEI RETIRED TEACHERS’ ASSOCIATION INC. PROPOSED BUDGET 2013/2014
Projected Income |
Schedule A |
Schedule B |
Projected Expenses |
|
|
Appendix 4
RTA-AGM Nov. 7, 2013
Membership Report
There have been many changes in address this year due to postal changes. Many people are exactly where they always were, but Canada Post has changed a letter or number in the postal code. People have been really great about notifying me about address change. We appreciate this.
50 new or corrected membership cards were sent out in September; we only send cards once a year as it is too costly to send them out at different times. In the coming year, we will send out non-laminated cards as needed with the laminated ones going out in September. Occasionally I will misspell a name or get it wrong in some way; this, too, will be corrected the following Sept.
The new 2014 executive will be looking for people interested in chairing or working on committees. Feel free to give your name to one of the executive members. The membership chair will need filling please form a line to the left!!!
We have 18 deceased members this year; the board will be passed around for additional names if we have missed anyone. If you know one of the deceased members, please put your name beside that person to carry a carnation in memory.
Respectfully Submitted: Joyce McCardle
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