Businesses are also suffering from elevated inflation through rising and volatile prices for inputs and the need to price their own goods and services to cover costs without losing customers. This dynamic is evident in agriculture and what we are hearing directly from farmers and ranchers, who are dealing with added weather challenges and on-going drought.
This has certainly added to the bias against sponsors allowing surpluses to build up in their pension plans. Third, there are issues with Canadian accounting standards for pensions in terms of valuation that have been posing challenges since they were adopted in 1999.