Industry committee  Sure. I was at Nortel for 18 years. I got married and had two kids. My kids are now seven and nine. I'm still not working. It's been 18 months. I am trying to look for a job very aggressively, but there's not much out there. I look at my two kids and I say that I have to hide t

Industry committee  Hi, there. I come before you today as one of many thousands of Canadian workers who have been numbed by the abuse of the existing BIA and CCAA processes. I am the person who initiated the petition presented in the House numerous times to change the BIA and the CCAA to protect al

Finance committee  There are just three countries, and that was an arrangement made through the lawyers to put the money into the U.S. as a holding tank. So again, we're going to be paid out of the Canadian estate, and there has been no discussion as far as any type of equalization.

Finance committee  Only if the BIA were changed.

Finance committee  First of all, you have to look at the process and see how broken the process is, when taking a look at getting a BIA amendment and a CCAA amendment to be retroactive to include companies that are currently in it. I don't know how you could take it back any further, but that would

Finance committee  It would be companies that are currently in CCAA heading into BIA. Paul, can you add to that? You can't go back to companies that have closed their doors. That's just way too late, but you could, under the acts the companies are currently in.

Finance committee  Sir, I'm going to hand it over to Paul because he's in a different province from me and their laws are a lot different. In Ontario we have the Ontario Pension Benefits Guarantee Fund trying to help out Nortel workers now. I think Quebec is doing additional work with the income s

Finance committee  No. And why.... You've got to understand. This is for the people. This is the voice of Canada. This is not just for some junk bond holder to take our money and go and leave the country.

Finance committee  I'll explain that to you. There's a U.S. unsecured creditor committee. The moneys are held in kind of a bank, a repository, in the U.S. The rest of the money is in the U.K. The money in the estate that I would be paid out for my severance is in Canada, and that is next to nothing

Finance committee  The Nortel estate. They keep those funds when they sell off parts of their business. They're keeping it in a holding tank, and that's in the U.S. I think it's Morgan Stanley that's holding that money. So there's no money in Canada. I'll be paid out of the U.S. estate and that mon

Finance committee  That's the other issue, because there's no sense of equalizing that money to each of the different countries under the BIA. Basically, I will be paid out of the Canadian estate and there will be nothing left.

Finance committee  The U.S. might end up with 50¢, 60¢ on the dollar, and the same with the U.K. We might end up with 10¢.

Finance committee  Yes, they will. They also have some type of preferred status in their CCAA or BIA equivalent.

Finance committee  When I first initiated the petition, I spoke to my MP and he handed the petition in--the 12,000 one that I got--and he said there's no chance; you guys are just going to be eating on the floor. You guys are at the bottom of the barrel.

Finance committee  I have brought a study, if you wouldn't mind me tabling it. There are three of them. One is from Australia. They moved over to preferred status, and they didn't see any change in the cost of credit. I have that and I can table it.