Companies provide other employee future benefits in addition to defined benefit pension plans. In many cases, these obligations and expenses can be significant, but often are ignored. Access the 2009 fiscal year-end statements for the following companies from SEDAR (www.sedar.com): BCE Inc., Potash Corp., Canadian Pacific Railway, and Air Canada.
Instructions
(a) For each company, outline the other employee future benefits that are provided. Detail the assumptions that have been used to account for these other employee future benefits.
(b) For each company, provide the following:
1. Funded status of the pension plans
2. Pension expense
3. Funded status of the other employee future benefits
4. Other employee future benefit expense and any plan assets to support the other employee future benefits
(c) Comment on the relative amounts of the deficit and expenses of the pension plans and the other benefits. What impact does this have on any analysis completed for companies?