Quebec’s QFL Solidarity Fund used its annual meeting to plea for the survival of a tax credit system which federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty ordered phased out in the last federal budget.
The credit gave a 15 percent bonus to investors who contributed to such workers funds as the Fonds de solidarité FTQ and Fondaction.
Funds chief Yvon Bolduc conceded that the new measure will discourage investors from putting their cash into the fund.
The Solidarity Fund QFL had 615,664 shareholders, net assets of $9.3 billion, a return of 5.3 percent and profits of $458 million as of the end of the 2012-2013 fiscal year, according to Bolduc.
Bolduc said he was satisfied with the results and said that the funds should remain strong and viable in the long term regardless of what happens with the tax credit.
FTQ President Michel Arsenault, who has been in the headlines lately, was asked about information that had come to light as a result of a two-year electronic surveillance by the provincial police.
Arsenault, who was not charged with any crime, apparently spent time on a yacht belonging to controversial construction entrepreneur Tony Accurso.
Arseneault said that times had changed and that unions have now undertaken their business in a different way.
