Multiemployer pension plan CAAT serves Ontario’s colleges and more than 800 public- and private-sector employers and has about 125,000 members.Merle Robillard/The Globe and Mail
The events that plunged the $23-billion CAAT Pension Plan into crisis, culminating Friday when its chief executive was put on leave and the leaders of its board were replaced, reached a tipping point in mid-November when a letter flagged concerns about alleged governance failures.
Three of CAAT’s top executives wrote to the pension plan’s board of trustees to outline several instances in which they felt governance controls had broken down, urging board members to investigate, four sources told The Globe and Mail.
One of the central concerns outlined in the letter was the approval of a $1.6-million vacation payout to CEO Derek Dobson last year as compensation for unused time off. That clashed with a policy that limited vacation time accruals and confused staff who knew he periodically took vacations.
Another focused on a personal relationship that Mr. Dobson had been having with a CAAT staff member for more than a year, and on the way the board handled it. But the three executives also outlined other concerns about internal processes and reporting that questioned Mr. Dobson’s leadership, the sources said.
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The Globe is not identifying the sources as they were not authorized to discuss sensitive internal matters.
The letter created a standoff between Mr. Dobson and three key members of his senior leadership team: chief investment officer Asif Haque, chief financial officer Michael Dawson and chief pension officer Evan Howard. To some people at CAAT, the executives took a principled stand. Others who sympathized with Mr. Dobson saw it as an attempted coup.
Initially, CAAT’s board stood by Mr. Dobson, and it engaged an outside expert in December to conduct a governance review, which is expected to be finished later this month. But the clash soon became untenable, and the three senior leaders abruptly left CAAT on Jan. 19.
Mr. Haque, Mr. Dawson and Mr. Howard did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Mr. Dobson could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Dobson told staff the next day that the executives left “on good terms,” but The Globe reported on Feb. 3 that the pension plan was in fact in a state of upheaval. The multiemployer pension plan serves Ontario’s colleges and more than 800 public- and private-sector employers and has about 125,000 members. The Globe has been a participating employer in CAAT since 2022.
Board chair Don Smith was subsequently suspended from his role, then removed from the board days later by the labour group that appointed him, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU).
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Less than two weeks ago, CAAT said the pension plan’s board of trustees continued “to have confidence” in Mr. Dobson and his ability to lead the organization. But the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA), which regulates the province’s pensions, has started a formal examination of CAAT, two of the sources said.
FSRA spokesperson Russ Courtney said the regulator does not comment on specific supervisory activities.
By the time CAAT’s board met on the evening of Feb. 11, their position had shifted and they voted to change the pension plan’s leadership. They announced Friday that Mr. Dobson is on administrative leave, effective immediately, and Kevin Fahey has been appointed acting CEO.
Mr. Fahey is a veteran CAAT employee, with more than 16 years at the plan, who was only promoted to CIO three weeks earlier, after the executives resigned.
CAAT also named a new board chair, Audrey Wubbenhorst, and vice-chair, Janet Greenwood, both of whom were already trustees.
“The CAAT board of trustees has determined that these changes are in the best interests of the plan and are necessary to restore stakeholder trust in CAAT’s leadership, governance and plan management,” Ms. Wubbenhorst said in a statement.
CAAT also said on Friday that previous vice-chair Kareen Stangherlin resigned from the board. Her departure illustrated the tensions that are still roiling CAAT’s leadership.
Ms. Stangherlin said in an e-mail on Friday that since the “sudden suspension of CAAT’s board chair without due process, the board’s commitment to good governance has been compromised, with decisions increasingly driven by emotion and reactivity rather than careful consideration.”
“In this environment, I’m no longer confident the board is prioritizing our members’ long-term interests, and I’ve therefore resigned from the board,” she wrote.
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CAAT spokesperson Stephen Hewitt said OPSEU representatives removed Mr. Smith from the board “according to established practice.”
A CAAT statement also said the governance issues under review “do not affect the Plan’s financial health or its ability to deliver secure, predictable pensions to members.”
Mr. Dobson has been CEO since 2009 and was praised for overseeing a period of ambitious expansion that increased CAAT’s membership by bringing more employers on board, and that boosted the pool of assets it manages by billions of dollars. But questions about leadership mounted over a period of months.
The $1.6-million payout for unused vacation time that Mr. Dobson collected last year was a clear flashpoint. It was the third such payment he received, following payouts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each in 2018 and 2021, three sources said.
Mr. Dobson appeared to take normal amounts of vacation for someone in his role, multiple sources said, raising questions about how he could justify such large payments, and how they were cleared by the CFO as well as CAAT’s board.
Months before Mr. Dobson accepted the latest payout, he was scheduled to take nearly a month of vacation, according to an internal document obtained by The Globe.
An e-mail circulated late in 2024 advised CAAT staff that Mr. Dobson would be “on vacation” from Dec. 16, 2024, until Jan. 20, 2025, then travelling to Vancouver for two days before returning to the office.
That included a stretch of several days around Christmas and New Year’s Day when CAAT’s offices typically close and all staff are off work. The note also advised that urgent messages and approval requests could still be flagged to Mr. Dobson if necessary.
Mr. Dobson was also on vacation in early February when The Globe first reported details of upheaval at the pension plan, but he cut his trip short and returned home, one source said.
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In addition, the payouts were at odds with internal company guidelines that limit how much vacation time employees can carry over or have paid out, according to documents reviewed by The Globe. In response, CAAT said in a statement that the CEO had “an employment contract, which governs his compensation and benefits.”
Mr. Dobson’s continuing personal relationship with a CAAT employee – which he disclosed to the board in November, 2024, and later to employees – also lingered as an issue. The board allowed Mr. Dobson’s workplace relationship to continue, putting guardrails in place to try to prevent perceived conflicts of interest, and said he complied fully with company policies. But that didn’t put discomfort among staff to rest.
As questions about governance added up, scrutiny on the CAAT board’s decision-making and oversight increased – especially for trustees who were chair or vice-chair when Mr. Dobson received vacation payouts, and who blessed his workplace relationship.
Unlike most public-company boards, CAAT’s board chair alternates between a trustee appointed by employee representatives and one appointed by employers, to support balance and shared decision-making.
Two of those trustees, Mr. Smith and Ms. Stangherlin, have been replaced. Another was Scott Blakey, a long-serving trustee who was previously CAAT’s chair in 2017 and 2018, and again in 2020 and 2021.
Last year, Mr. Blakey co-chaired the board’s audit committee, including when executives raised concerns over the vacation payout and the CEO’s workplace relationship in November, three sources said.
Mr. Blakey stepped down from CAAT’s board on Dec. 12, two of the sources said. And on Jan. 20, after the three senior executives resigned, he joined CAAT’s senior executive ranks as interim executive vice-president and chief people and culture officer. That put Mr. Blakey in charge of a sprawling portfolio that includes CAAT’s human resources, finance, operations, information technology, policy, legal and office services teams.
Another former board chair, Rasho Donchev, stepped down from a nine-year stint as a trustee in June, 2024. In May, 2025, CAAT hired him as vice-president of pension solutions, to work with employers and unionized workplaces as part of a drive to expand CAAT’s membership.
CAAT’s code of conduct for board members stipulates that trustees must have a cooling off period before they can join the organization, according to three sources and an internal document reviewed by The Globe.
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Mr. Blakey was exempted because he is a temporary appointment, expected to leave the plan by December, 2026. But Mr. Donchev’s hiring was an exception to the policy, two sources said.
In September, 2025, CAAT made changes to the policy, shortening the cooling off period from three years to one year, the sources said.
The upheaval has been jarring for CAAT. Employees at the pension plan cheerily call themselves “CAATsters,” and Mr. Dobson had projected a nerdy, aw-shucks persona. But staff morale has taken a hit and, as long-tenured leaders departed with little explanation, that spirit had started to turn sour, four sources said.
With Mr. Dobson now sidelined, nearly all of CAAT’s senior leadership team has changed or left the plan over the past four weeks, leaving a void that the board must now fill even as it faces continued scrutiny over its own performance.
“We have gone through a lot recently, and many CAATsters have been understandably upset by it all,” CAAT said in an internal e-mail to employees on Friday. “The board determined the best way to restore stability was through this change.”