Should this be happening?

Employees at Morinville’s Provincial Building seemed amused to see a pig, a judge and a convict carrying signs and pacing outside their offices last Thursday.The eye-catching trio was protesting the treatment of a retired Canadian soldier by the Alberta Government.


Grant McLean was a captain in the Canadian military when he was offered a job as a manager at the Calgary Correctional Centre, also known as the Spy Hill Jail. Before making the move, McLean asked his potential employer, the Alberta Solicitor General’s office, if he could transfer his military pension contributions into the provincial government’s plan.

“They gave me the letter and I took them at their word,” said McLean, explaining that he left the military after 14 1/2 years of service only to find out the pension couldn’t be transferred after all.That was in 1982.



McLean said he’s been fighting the system ever since, because provincial government departments keep passing the file off to other departments. ‘It’s not our area’ and ‘I don’t have the authority to deal with this, it’s somebody else’ are some of the excuses McLean said he’s been given.“I took it to the pension appeal board and ‘no, its not within our jurisdiction’” he quoted them as saying. “We just keep waltzing around the Maypole.”

The St. Albert resident – who has also been an aide-de-campe to Alberta’s Lieutenant Governor and mayor of the City of Airdrie – said it was not his intention to end up fighting his battle in court.

“I tried every means possible to resolve this thing out of court. I don’t believe in taking people to court and I don’t think I should have to take my employer to court,” he said.McLean said to add insult to injury, the province denied they had offered to transfer his pension in the first place.“There’s documented evidence now on file that a number of steps were supposed to have been followed and they weren’t,” he said.“The province didn’t cough any of those up, I dug them all out of the provincial archives. That’s not right.

The people who were in charge of the personnel office should have produced those relevant documents but they didn’t.”A group of McLean’s friends have created a website to help publicize his fight with the province over his pension.A letter posted at www.friendsofgrant.com appears to be an offer of employment that does indeed state that McLean could transfer his pension.

“Your Federal Government pension contributions are transferable to the Alberta Government Management Pension Plan,” says the letter. “You may apply to have your pension contributions transferred once you commence employment with us.”

The personnel manager who hired McLean later testified at a discovery hearing that she was new to her job, didn’t receive the proper training, and was unfamiliar with the pension fund’s regulations.

The case continues to languish in the court system. “I don’t have a judge, I don’t have a court room, I don’t have a court date,” said McLean, during his protest in Morinville.McLean said he and his friends have been taking their costumed protest to MLAs’ offices around the province to draw attention to the case.

“I’d like people to see exactly what the government is like when it’s at work,” he said.“I spent a good number of years of my life serving this province and this country and the people in it and I’m astounded that they can try to rationalize a situation like this – that it should be seen or heard by a judge.”

Five years after filing a lawsuit against the provincial government over the matter, McLean is still waiting for a court date.“We’ve had the pre-trial conferences with the judge, the examinations for discovery have been complete for three years so I don’t think it’s that far away,” he said. “But that being said we’ve got a backlog of cases in the courts that are very lengthy.”

In the end, McLean wonders why the case has to go to court at all.“I’ve been involved in government and politics and when something is done wrong you just make it right,” he said.

© 2007 Morinville Mirror