Québec City Chapter of the Retired Members Guild (RMG)
MINUTES of the virtual meeting of October 16, 2020.
PRESENT AT THE MEETING:
Jean-Pierre Morency
Luc Carrière
Élie Ahad
Michel Bédard
Léandre Sévigny
Madeleine Lapointe
Absent:
Daniel Brouillette
André Cantin
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Meeting Call to order
Jean-Pierre Morency welcomes everyone. The purpose of the virtual meeting is to hear the news from the National Executive of the RMG. There is therefore no agenda.
National Executive meetings were held on July 8 and October 8 of the current year.
Luc Carrière sent us the minutes of the July 8, 2020, meeting as well as the agenda of the October 8 meeting. He’s ready to answer our questions.
Pensions Committee
Charlotte Strandlund sent a letter to Steve Hindle in March 2019. She hasn’t had any response so far.
Jean-Pierre Morency applied to this committee and never received an answer. He is outraged that there is no representative from Quebec on that committee.
Finance
Expenses have been limited due to COVID-19. That means that there’s a healthy surplus.
Richard Rice suggested providing each chapter with a banner bearing the Guild’s name and other promotional items.
Élie Ahad asked why the National Executive decided not to send an annual allowance if they have so much money. Luc Carrière responded that if we need money, we can ask for it. He also mentioned that membership dues were supposed to go up this year, but because of the decrease in expenses, there won’t be any increase.
Promotional Items
PIPSC has decided to send masks to members who request them.
It will also be sending three copies of the recently published volume celebrating the centennial to each chapter as a promotional item.
Miscellaneous
The PIPSC AGM is scheduled for Saturday, December 5. The meeting will take place virtually using ZOOM. Not many resolutions have been submitted. Luc Carrière thinks that the late motion on the compensation of part-time Vice-Presidents will be refused because it is late.
The RMG’s National Executive has approved our motion to extend the term of members of the Quebec City Chapter of the RMG Executive by a year.
Membership of the Retired Members Guild continues to decline. It is now down to 2,700 members. The main issue is contacting each member to renew their dues, which PIPSC is not prepared to do. Most retired members stay on to access ServicePlus. However, ServicePlus, aside from travel insurance, is not very appealing to those living outside the Ottawa area.
Members of the RMG’s National Executive wondered what they could do for members during the pandemic. They came to the conclusion that, apart from phoning members personally to see how they’re doing, there isn’t much we can do.
The CS Group is going on strike. Their agreement expired more than 3 years ago. The request was made to Debi Daviau. The CS Group Executive is awaiting a response.
We have no news from the government on the indexation of our pensions for next year.
Following the information on the presentation of the bill to the Quebec National Assembly on target benefit pension funds, we discussed the funds.
Michel asked Luc Carrière to let us know if he had any important news.
Luc Carrière suggested that we have a virtual meeting after the next AGM. Carried unanimously.
Action: Luc Carrière
Madeleine Lapointe, Secretary-Treasurer
Québec City Chapter of the Retired Members Guild
Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
October 19, 2020
Jean-Pierre Morency
adeleine Lapointe