Jana Steele

Jana Steele is a partner in Osler’s Pensions & Benefits Group. Jana has provided advice on the conversion and implementation of the “Shared Risk Plan” pension model for several plans in the province of New Brunswick. She has significant expertise and experience regarding plan design, including innovative plan designs, such as shared risk and target benefit plans – and has written extensively on such plans. Jana also has extensive experience dealing with pensions and benefits in the context of corporate transactions. She is involved in providing advice with respect to both the establishment and the ongoing administration of pension plans. Jana advises on issues such as plan structure, governance, administration, compliance, trustee obligations, surplus matters, plan conversions, plan mergers, transfers and plan wind-ups. Jana also has experience dealing with pensions and benefits issues arising in insolvencies and corporate restructurings.

Jana’s clients have included universities, non-profit entities, governments, multinational corporations and multi-employer pension plans. In addition, she has significant transaction experience involving numerous publicly traded entities. Such transactions routinely involve pension plans with employees in numerous Canadian jurisdictions.

Jana is a past chair of the pensions and bene?ts executive of the Ontario Bar Association. She has been a guest lecturer at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, Osgoode Hall Law school, Western Law, and the University of Calgary. Jana recently chaired an international pension lawyer conference in Brussels with the International Pensions and Employee Bene?ts Lawyers Association (IPEBLA). Jana is the chair of the IPEBLA Steering Committee.

Jana was also a member of the FSCO Legal Advisory Committee for several years.