William A. (Bill) Coish, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, McGill University
If you qualify for the McGill University Pension Plan (MUPP), you should have received an email on Monday (2026 April 20) with the subject line “2025: It’s time to Vote & Register to attend the Annual Meeting/C’est le temps de voter et de vous inscrire pour participer à l’Assemblée annuelle”. The email contains a link that can be used to vote FOR or AGAINST continuance of pension plan voting procedures. Please see below for a brief summary and details on some points to consider before you vote.
Summary:
The result of voting FOR continuance: The current voting procedures to elect members of the Pension Administration Committee (PAC) give one vote to employees for every dollar they hold in the plan. In this scheme, those close to retirement (who may elect to leave the plan or convert their holdings to an annuity upon retirement) typically have more than 100 votes for every vote of a new member whose holdings may be locked in for the next 30 to 40 years. The number of employee-elected PAC members would remain four (the current number).
The result of voting AGAINST continuance: Voting would be based on one-member-one-vote, rather than one-dollar-one-vote, but the number of Pension Administration Committee representatives elected by MUPP members would be reduced from four to two.
Details:
The current vote will decide the voting procedures used to determine the future membership of the Pension Administration Committee (PAC). The PAC oversees the investments and administrative aspects of the McGill University Pension Plan (MUPP). Younger employees may have their future pension contributions subject to the decisions of the PAC for several decades, but under the current voting procedure they have a negligible influence on the membership of the PAC.
Consider two hypothetical employees: Jeannette (age 25, hired one year ago) and Susan (age 65, hired 40 years ago, when she was 25). Each of them has a salary of $100k in 2026 dollars and the salary tracks inflation, but doesn’t otherwise increase (Susan’s nominal salary was $39k in 1986, measured in 1986 dollars). Each of them contributes 15% of their gross salary to a pension plan every year and each of them earns a 5% after-inflation return every year (much less than the 8% after-inflation return of the S&P500 over this time). In this example, Susan will have a total pension value of $1.8M in 2026 and Jeannette will have contributed $15k in her first year. In electing members of the Pension Administration Committee, Susan will have 121 votes for every vote granted to Jeannette. Why should Susan have a vote that is 121 times as powerful as Jeannette’s? Susan may elect to convert her pension to an annuity next year upon retirement, or move the balance to an account at another financial institution, while Jeannette’s pension contributions are locked in for the duration of her employment (potentially 30 to 40 years).
The current situation at McGill is actually more extreme than in the example above because salaries have historically increased faster than inflation over the course of most careers and (at McGill) pension contribution rates are increased with increasing age (McGill is the only U15 university to do this in a defined contribution plan). In addition, there is a broad range of salaries among pension members (including support staff, managerial staff, academics, and senior administrators), so members with larger salaries, and therefore larger pension contributions, have a larger number of votes. Is this fair? Is this good for the long-term viability of the pension?
In publicly traded corporations, all shareholders typically have the right to sell their shares on the open market. Those shareholders who hold a greater number of shares and thus have more capital at stake (more “skin in the game”) are granted greater voting power in decisions of the corporation. It is non-intuitive, but the situation for pensions is actually reversed. Those employees who are close to retirement may choose to collect a lump sum pension at retirement or to convert their pension to an annuity, taking capital out of the pension fund. In contrast, employees who are newly hired will have their future contributions locked in for the duration of their employment, which may be several decades. Newer employees have more skin in the game, but their votes are massively undervalued in our current $1 per vote proportional voting scheme.
There is a poison pill for voting AGAINST continuation. The number of MUPP member-elected representatives would be reduced from four to two. It is not clear to me why we are asked to choose between a rock and a hard place. There is no good reason for proportional voting ($1/vote) to be tied to the number of member-elected representatives on the Pension Administration Committee. There is a legal minimum requirement that there be at least two voting members elected to serve on the PAC (one from current employees and one from retirees), but there is no legal maximum. McGill could re-instate a parity committee with no legal hurdle, while allowing a properly democratic election of those members (one-member-one-vote, rather than one-dollar-one-vote). I have personally voted AGAINST continuation consistently over the past ten years, and I have submitted a proxy vote request AGAINST continuation again this year, for the reasons given above.
AMPS is now a member of The Confederation of Faculty Associations at McGill (COFAM). COFAM is currently seeking substantial improvements to McGill’s pensions, in collaboration with other employee associations at McGill. These improvements include improving governance (e.g., the voting procedures described above) and eliminating McGill’s two-tiered pension in favour of a more efficient defined benefit plan similar to that at Université de Montréal. We need to work together to create a robust and efficient pension plan at McGill. If you are an academic in the Faculty of Science and you haven’t already done so, please sign a union card to participate in AMPS activities (e.g. votes and general meetings). If you have ideas to improve pensions or other employment conditions, please let us know and volunteer your time to contribute to the collective effort.