Finance committee  Go ahead, Melanie.

Finance committee  I speak to you today to present a working Canadian's perspective on the retirement income security of Canadians. My name is Paul Hanrieder, and I was a longstanding employee at Nortel who was severed with no severance in 2009. Retirement planning is something that is part of every facet of every decision you make during your working career.

Finance committee  I appreciate it. Yes, I'd like to comment about the feeling of the employees inside. They say that we saw this coming. Well, Nortel employees are probably the most dedicated, hard-working employees. It was a passion, as mentioned by some of the members down here. We went in there and we built the company.

Finance committee  Sorry. I'll slow down. All of these contracts were conveniently rendered null and void when Nortel filed for creditor protection under the federal CCAA legislation. To our even further surprise, we were now to be ranked equal to unsecured creditors and could only hope to expect pennies on the dollar in the settlement that could easily be more than a year away.

Finance committee  Good morning. My name is Paul Hanrieder. I'm a terminated employee of Nortel with almost 15 years with the company. I would like to thank the members of this committee, especially Mr. Mulcair, for the opportunity to come here today to speak to you on issues related to Nortel's bankruptcy protection and filing, the impacts on terminated employees, and ancillary effects to Canadian taxpayers that have resulted.