Welcome to the FSNA Ottawa Branch website

Friday, March 5, 2010

Fellow FSNA members,

The 2010 federal budget was tabled yesterday and I wanted to highlight some of the measures that may have an impact on you.

• The New Horizons for Seniors Program will receive $10 million over two years to support projects that focus on volunteering among seniors and projects that raise awareness of financial abuse of seniors.

• The Government said it was committed to maintaining Canada's retirement income system strong and efficient to ensure that Canadians have the best available opportunities to save adequately and effectively for their retirement. In preparation of the Finance Ministers’ meeting in May, public consultations will be held in March to look at the main issues in saving for retirement and approaches to ensuring the ongoing strength of the system.

• The 2010-11 departmental budgets will not be increased to fund the 1.5% increase in annual wages for the federal public administration.  Current employees will see their wages increase as set out in collective agreements but federal departments will be required to reallocate from the remainder of their operation budgets to fund these increases. The budget did not contain measures that would affect federal pensions or their indexation.

• There will be an additional $1 billion invested in social housing to fund construction and renovation projects for seniors, single-parent families, recent immigrants and Aboriginal Canadians living off reserve.

• As part of that $1 billion, $200 million will go toward housing for low-income seniors and $50 million for persons with disabilities.

-

Changes to Board of Directors and Chairs of Committees

A new director (Wallace Dowswell) has been named and a number of changes have been made to the roles of some of the directors. See the list of directors.

Call For Nominations – FSNA Ottawa Branch Board of Directors

Each year, one-half of the twelve members of the Ottawa Branch Board of Directors reach the end of their two-year term.  Elections are held to fill the resultant vacancies during the Annual General Meeting (AGM), this year to be held 19 April 2010.

The Ottawa Branch By-Laws call for the establishment of a Nominations Committee, a written Call for Nominations and circulation to Branch members of the list of nominees not later than ten days before the AGM.  To ensure transparency in the process, the call for nominations is provided to our members through the Branch Report. This allows sufficient time for the list of nominees and their CVs to be compiled and included in the next Branch Report, which will be available to members at the end of March.