As you know, CAPE and other unions have been urging the Treasury Board to remedy the unreasonable delays in the transition to Canada Life as the benefits provider for the Public Service Health Care Plan.
While there have been some improvements to the transition portion, we are still hearing from members having difficulties with the plan changes themselves – limits on spending, changes in coverage and more.
This transition and plan were implemented by the employer, the Treasury Board, and are completely under its purview. Delays and plan changes are causing stress and undue hardship for plan members seeking access to reimbursements, treatments, and services.
We are communicating to the Treasury Board that this is yet another example of “information not consultation” and that it must include bargaining agents in discussions as important as this well ahead of their implementation to help mitigate negative impacts to hardworking public sector workers who have already had to go through so much.
As CAPE continues to advocate on your behalf, including evaluating how it can best affect the ongoing parliamentary committee study, we have prepared a template letter [download] that you can personalize and send to your member of Parliament to help apply political pressure.
Our research team is also collecting anecdotal stories to include in a brief for the Changeover of the Public Service Health Care Plan from Sun Life to Canada Life study. If you would like to share your experience with Canada Life and the transition, please send a short summary to general@acep-cape.ca with the subject line “Canada Life anecdote” by January 12, 2024. Information received after this date will not be included or referenced in the committee brief but will still be very useful for CAPE to document.
