11. Post-employment Benefits 

## Pension Plans 

The Company has three pension plans which provide either defined benefit or defined contribution pension benefits or both for the employees of the Company. The Energy Transportation pension plan in Canada provides non-contributory defined benefit pension and/or defined contribution benefits to Canadian employees. The Energy Transportation pension plan in the United States provides non-contributory defined benefit pension benefits to U.S. employees. The Enbridge Consumers Gas pension plan provides contributory defined benefit pension and/or defined contribution benefits to employees of the Energy Distribution and Energy Services segments. 

## Defined Benefit 

Retirement benefits under defined benefit plans are based on the employees’ years of service and remuneration. Contributions made by the Company are in accordance with independent actuarial valuations and are invested primarily in publicly traded equity and fixed income securities. The most recent actuarial valuation was performed as of January 1, 2000. 

Pension costs under the defined benefit pension plan reflect management’s best estimates of the rate of return on pension plan assets, rate of salary increases and various other factors including mortality rates, terminations and retirement ages. Adjustments arising from plan amendments, actuarial gains and losses, and changes to assumptions are amortized over the expected average remaining service lives of the employees. 

Consistent with its ratemaking process, Enbridge Consumers Gas records as pension expense the contributions deemed sufficient by actuaries to fully fund the plans over an acceptable time frame. 

## Defined Contribution 

Defined contribution pension benefits cover all employees hired by the Energy Transportation segment after January 1, 1997 and after October 1, 1999 for the Energy Services segment, as well as existing employees who elected to leave the defined benefit plan on a prospective basis. Contributions are based on each employee’s age and years of service for the Energy Transportation segment and are based on a fixed percentage of base pay for each employee in the Energy Services segment. For defined contribution pension benefits, pension expense equals amounts contributed by the Company. 

The Company’s pension expense totalled a net credit of $4.8 million (1999 — $9.4 million expense; 1998 — $5.0 million expense) and the pension asset was $40.9 million (1999 — $21.3 million). 

## Post-employment Benefits Other than Pensions 

Post-employment benefits other than pensions (OPEB) include supplemental health, dental and life insurance coverage for qualifying retired employees. The Company’s OPEB expense totalled $6.5 million (1999 — $2.0 million; 1998 — $2.6 million) and OPEB liability was $5.5 million. 

## Accounting for Post-employment Benefits 

Effective January 1, 2000 the Company adopted the new accounting recommendations — employee future benefits with respect to all of its post-employment benefits plans, except those for Enbridge Consumers Gas which is not required to adopt the recommendations until fiscal 2001. The new standard requires the accrual method of accounting for all employee future benefits, including pensions and post-employment medical and dental benefits. 

At December 31, 2000, the market value of the Company’s pension and OPEB assets was $1,242.6 million (1999 — $1,054.0 million), with a corresponding pension and OPEB obligation of $764.7 million (1999 — $753.4 million). Changes in the benefit obligation and plan assets are presented in Note 16. 

