A Note From McInnes Cooper January 10, 2013

Olddog, sorry the Federal Court rules do not provide the Court with the power to order payment of legal fees by the GOC. They would have to do so voluntarily.

Navrat, Toope was never a mediator, he was appointed as the negotiator. In my view he was a positive addition to the process.

Maggie , it's not compounded, it's simple interest , so it's on the whole amount the 3.27

Thanks Peter I do think it will help and look forward to seeing the sample work sheet. One other question is it even a legal possibility that the judge could order/ direct that the legal fees be paid by the govt?

Navrat, our firm has tax lawyers, but they are not accountants. They advise on principles not calculations. My concern is that there are so many individual circumstances that could come into play. I would suggest HR block or a program like "taxchopper.com" (which I use, it is free to use, you only pay when you want to file a return, so you could use it to run scenarios.).

It makes you wonder, when we heard that the GOC brought in Mr. Toope, was it for our benefit or the GOC ? We're they willing to negioate, or a take it or leave it approach

As someone with an accounting background I assumed it was and that's what I was trying to get across to people yesterday, but they were treating it as a one time application and coming up with next to nothing in interest... thanks. Love the idea of a sample calculation to help people out.

Maggie, it is annual interest. We will see if we can get a work sheet in excel to help.

Ok , I wish we would have known, we are not lawyers, this , I assume the whole class is the most angry about, everyone was working on the assumption of compounded interest,,Your firm has Tax experts, can they advise us on the tax issues because on taxes we are being smoked and I know you had nothing to do about that but when you do the calculations , most of us are getting 50 to 60 percent , it would have been nice to walk away with 100 percent in pocket!

olddog, good idea, I will see what we can do.

Navrat, good question on the RRSP rollover. I would make the individual request SISIP but it was far to complex to do this on a class wide basis.

There is also some confusion as to how the interest is being calculated. Are the % listed annual rates or are they a one time calculation on the total amount of the retro. Both for the regular interest and the tax top-up amount. People really don't know how much they are getting.

Didnt say I wasnt going to support it , I was commenting on what I see is peoples hicup/ problem with it. They want to see actual numbers or be able to figure out actual numbers . I believe one sample work sheet on how the interest is being calculated etc would alleviate this problem .

Navrat, the Federal Court Act provides that compound interest is not payable on awards, so it was a no starter. We asked, GOC said, no we don't have to under the Federal Court Act. end of negotiations. We couldn't go to Court on this ands win with any real prospect of success.

Peter, the simple interest, why not compounded