Banks say Canada Post should not be allowed to open the teller window + MORE Jul 12th

Q: Can Canadian citizens living in the U.S. transfer their RRSP mutual funds to ETFs? My bank informed me that was not allowed.
— Jilted in the south
A: Sometimes, Jilted, getting the right answer involves asking the right question. I had a client who was recently informed that there were no fees associated with his mutual fund account. I suppose it was true that no fees were paid to buy and sell the mutual funds, but the embedded MER fees of 2.5% to 3% were conveniently overlooked.
In this case, I think the bank isn’t giving you the full story. When you have a mutual fund RRSP with a bank, you can generally only use that RRSP to buy mutual funds from that bank. It is a proprietary account. ETFs are actually stocks that trade on a stock exchange, so without an appropriate account, you can’t buy them.
It is likely that your bank offers index mutual funds, that are like ETFs, through your account. The fees are generally higher for index funds than ETFs. However, you may not be able to buy these mutual funds as a non-resident…

Convenience-store operator says fourth-quarter profit rose 80 per cent; full-year profit topped $1-billion (U.S.)

Earlier this summer, Canada’s finance ministers agreed to an expansion of the Canada Pension Plan. However, as a recent study by ADP Canada has found, many Canadians are still kept up at night worrying about their retirement.
The study reported that 77% of working Canadians would consider changing jobs if, all other things being equal, another employer offered better retirement support.
“We weren’t surprised that the majority of employees would leave for a job with better retirement support,” says Elizabeth Williams, Director of Brand and Communications at ADP Canada. “But,” she adds, “we were surprised that that number was 77%.”
How to pay less tax on your RRSP withdrawls »
The survey found that 70% of small business employees would consider leaving, in comparison to employees of mid-sized companies (86%) and large companies (74%.)
“We also found it surprising how many employees from mid-sized companies felt this way—at 86%, it was much higher than for smaller businesses,” says Williams…

OTTAWA – The lobby group representing Canada’s big banks says Canada Post should not be allowed to expand onto its turf as a means of generating needed revenue.
The Canadian Bankers Association says there is no public policy objective or existing gap in the marketplace that would warrant a Crown corporation becoming a retail bank.
In a brief to the federal task force reviewing Canada Post, the bankers association says Canadians already enjoy widespread access to a highly competitive range of financial services.
While Canada Post itself has said little about getting into banking, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers has strongly promoted the idea.
Postal services in many other countries provide banking services, and Canada had such a system from shortly after Confederation until 1969.
The union says while thousands of towns and villages across Canada do not have a bank, many of them have a post office that could provide financial and banking services.
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Alberta’s real gross domestic product actually shrunk by four per cent last year and is expected to decrease by another 1.9 per cent this year, according to the latest economic outlook from ATB Financial.