Industry committee  Hope springs eternal, but we understand what the current legislation states.

Industry committee  Just to elaborate on that, I've been well aware that in the U.S., the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation will protect the assets of the pensioners up to $54,000 a year in bankruptcy. That's $54,000. In Canada, with the exception of Ontario, it's zero. So there's a fallback me

Industry committee  All of this is subject to negotiation and working its way through the bankruptcy courts, but certainly I think the Canadian estate on a cash basis is being depleted and is probably heading towards zero. There is a large amount of cash sitting in the U.S. estate. I forget what the

Industry committee  I think there are two aspects. One of them is what happened in the marketplace, and certainly that's been experienced by all pension plans. And also there is current regulation, where, again, in 2006 the plan was only 86% funded; so you put that in place, the drop in the market v

Industry committee  I do believe that in 2006, on an ongoing basis, they were actually 1.06% funded on an ongoing basis. That's the only data that I have.

Industry committee  It is $1.1 billion that is the deficiency in the pension plan.

Industry committee  State “preferred status”.

Industry committee  I understand. First of all, they're not my employees; they're my fellow pensioners.

Industry committee  The one thing I could address is the potential impact there could have been on Nortel pensioners. I think currently it's every three years that we have to go through an actuarial evaluation. The last one was done in 2006, and at that time the plan was 86% on a solvency basis. To

Industry committee  I understand. I'm looking forward for other poor people.

Industry committee  From day one—I go back a year—we knew that it was risky for the Nortel pensioners and that a bill that would actually help them out was a long shot. Hope springs eternal within our breast. But as I stated a year ago, if we didn't do it for Nortel, who would be the next poor sucke

Industry committee  I'll be speaking.

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me begin with where I will end in five minutes. Since the spring of 2009, our Nortel group has been asking for pension deficits to receive preferred priority status, not the super-priority status as currently tabled in Bill C-501. We want pension def

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Penalties in terms of parliamentarians or the government?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm really not an expert or at liberty to say, but—