The Canadian National Railway Co. is appointing Frederic Bessette as director of compensation strategy.
Before taking a career break between October 2024 and May 2025, he was director of total rewards at Canfor Forest Products Ltd. In that role, he led the organization to a win at Benefits Canada‘s 2021 Workplace Benefits Awards in the Financial Wellness category for a three-year financial education program that was launched in 2020.
“We didn’t just want to do a program to check a box and feel good about it,” said Bessette following the win. “We wanted something that was good enough that it could be rolled for another three-year cycle and that’s why it was so important that we carefully considered everything for this project — not just the topics themselves, but the pace and the depth of the content.”
Read: Canfor wins award for educating employees on retirement savings
Before joining Canfor in February 2019, he held a variety of roles, including: director of total rewards and human resources administration at Seaspan ULC; principal of total rewards and strategies at Mercer Canada; principal of rewards at the City of Montreal; director of total rewards and HR information services at Ubisoft; national specialist in compensation at Intact Financial Corp.; senior compensation consultant at Telus Health; compensation specialist at Videotron Telecom Ltd.; manager of labour relations, pensions and benefits at CSD, a Quebec-based construction union.
Bessette completed both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial relations at the Université Laval, as well as training in organizational leadership at Western University’s Ivey Business School and a certificate in business strategy from Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business.
Read: 2022 DC Plan Summit: Canfor’s multi-year financial wellness program goes beyond retirement