Press Statement
Court Ellingson, Alberta NDP Shadow Minister for Finance, issued the following statement in response to the UCP government’s move to fire the AIMCo board:
“AIMCo is in charge of the pensions of 375,000 Albertans. And what is the signal to those Albertans that the UCP government sent today? In an unprecedented move, the UCP fired the entire board and the CEO, and made their own politician—not an investment expert—the sole person in charge of over $170 billion of these Albertans’ pensions. This is UCP incompetence.
“Today, they could have put in place a new interim board and CEO, rather than this drastic, earth-shaking move. They chose not to. This is supposed to be a non-partisan, arms-length organization. Appointing a UCP politician the head of it sends entirely the wrong signal to Albertans and the investment community.
“The Premier herself appointed some of these AIMCo directors. The Finance Minister himself said this spring that AIMCo was doing a good job. To suggest this is about AIMCo salaries, when this government passed legislation to remove the caps on salaries for board members, is ludicrous.
“AIMCo’s poor returns are a clear reflection of the UCP’s incompetence. We have raised concerns about their poor returns for years, and we’ve noted AIMCo’s returns have been below that of the Canada Pension Plan. Until now, the UCP even proposed using AIMCo to manage the proposed Alberta Pension Plan. Any such APP scheme should now be completely off the table.
“This government must immediately pull the finance minister from governing AIMCo and put in place a non-partisan interim board and CEO. Anything less is reckless.”
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