Health Association Nova Scotia

HANS is one of the five joint sponsors of NSHEPP, alongside four healthcare unions — CUPE, NSNU, NSGEU, and Unifor. The sponsors jointly govern the plan and appoint trustees to the Nova Scotia Pension Services Corporation board. This gives HANS a fiduciary role in overseeing the investment policies and administration of the province's healthcare pension assets.

No. HANS does not operate as an asset manager. Its fiduciary role is governance-based — it helps set investment policy and selects the managers and advisors who execute the NSHEPP portfolio. Day-to-day investment management is delegated to external firms within parameters approved by the sponsor group.

Ultimate authority rests with the plan's joint sponsors, who appoint representatives to the Nova Scotia Pension Services Corporation board. The board establishes the statement of investment policies and procedures and engages investment consultants and external asset managers. Catherine Butler, as HANS President and CEO, represents the employer-side sponsors in those governance discussions.

It is structurally both. HANS is a member-based industry association that represents health-sector employers in collective bargaining and labour relations. Simultaneously, it functions as a pension plan sponsor for NSHEPP. This dual mandate is unusual: most Canadian pension sponsors are single-purpose entities, not associations with concurrent advocacy responsibilities.

igility is a wholly owned subsidiary of Health Association Nova Scotia, based in Bedford, Nova Scotia. It operates as a shared-services and consulting firm providing operational, technology, and human-resources support to healthcare organizations across the province. It is separate from HANS's pension-sponsorship function but sits under the same corporate umbrella.