News

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario has awarded damages to a woman who was encouraged to retire by her employer. The case involves a 60-year-old woman whose age and years of service with her employer qualified her to take early retirement.  While s...– Read More

While a fully indexed pension may be a nice thing to have, full pension indexation is not a right, as the following court cases in Saskatchewan and Quebec prove.   Prove it in writing, Saskatchewan court says. In a March 2013 decision, the Saskatch...– Read More

The federal government has passed legislation extending the Canada Labour Code’s family leave provisions to cover parents of critically ill children as well as parents of children who have been victims of violent crime. The new provisions include t...– Read More

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty unveiled the federal government’s 2013-14 budget on March 21.  While heavily focused on skills training and industrial development, the document contained many relatively obscure but potentially significant...– Read More

The retired members of the NewPage paper mill in Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia have received notice that they must repay $5 million in pension overpayments resulting from a miscalculation by their former pension administrator.  For most pensioners, th...– Read More

Coughlin is proud to support the North Bay chapters of the Professional Engineers of Ontario and the Ontario Association of Certified Engineering Technicians and Technologists in their sponsorship of Community Living North Bay (CLNB).  We’ve do...– Read More

Research by the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation suggests that the average Canadian will spend the last 10 years of his/her life in sickness, disability and immobility. In its 2013 Report on the health of Canadians, the Foundation says there is a 10-...– Read More

2013 federal budget: a triumph of obscurities. Read the Coughlin Courier. (PDF 300 KB)– Read More

Following are the suggested provincial and territorial dental fee guide increases for 2013 as established by their respective dental associations: Province Fee guide increase British Columbia 3.74 per cent. Yukon Available April 1, 2013. Alberta N...– Read More

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that pensioners should not be first in line to claim a company’s assets during bankruptcy or insolvency. In a precedent-setting case, the Supreme Court overturned an earlier Ontario Court of Appeal decision tha...– Read More

An Ontario Court of Appeal decision awarding the proceeds of a deceased man’s pension to his divorced wife rather than the common-law spouse with whom he was living at the time of his death could result in many costly lawsuits, a loss of pension ass...– Read More

The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld controversial rulings by Quebec’s courts affirming that common-law couples do not have the same rights and responsibilities on relationship breakdown as married couples. In a 5-4 decision, the nation’s h...– Read More

In 1995, Coughlin & Associates Ltd. established a preferred provider network (PPN) of pharmacies in the National Capital Region.  Its primary objective at the time was to contain the rapidly rising costs of prescription drugs. The issue of risin...– Read More

The Ontario Arbitration Board has upheld the principle that benefit plans may include dispensing fee caps based on the reasonable and customary limits used by group benefits underwriters. The judgement by Arbitrator Joseph B. Rose originated with a griev...– Read More

Canada’s finance ministers have agreed to study the possible enhancement of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP.) In the annual meeting of the federal and provincial finance ministers held in December 2012, the ministers agreed to consider “modest i...– Read More

Arbitration Board affirms reasonable and customary fee caps. Read the Coughlin Courier. (PDF 1.13 MB)– Read More

Many Canadian companies offer robust benefits to full-time employees. However, as US-based business writer Emma Collins explores below, a new trend is emerging in some high-demand sectors: companies that fight for needed employees by offering unconvent...– Read More

The Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled that a common-law spouse may not qualify to receive survivor pension benefits, even if he/she is living with the plan member at the time of death. In a landmark decision, the court said that, under certain circumstan...– Read More

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that the unions representing members of the federal public service, the RCMP and the Armed Forces are not entitled to the $28 billion pension plan surplus appropriated previously by the federal government. In a 9-0 d...– Read More

The federal government’s proposal to create a new universal pension plan appears to be dying. While legislation introducing the new pooled registered savings plan (PRPP) was passed by the House of Commons in June 2012, to date, no province has pass...– Read More