Mr. Crête, I believe that an indemnity fund would have saved thousands of investors all these difficulties and complications. A fund of that kind would be an important advance for all Canadian investors and the entire Canadian trust industry. It could even become a symbol internationally.
We have to recognize that the market is structured so differently from what it was barely a generation ago. Mr. Crête, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, you should know that the pan-Canadian committee of investors has never had sufficient information on the people who held this famous paper. I know, because I organized the first forum on the ABCP crisis last October for the pension funds. That was when we were flabbergasted to find out that more than a hundred pension funds in Quebec alone were directed affected.
An indemnity fund, therefore, is a legislative instrument that really could help all investors and spare us these nickel-and-dime, fly-by-night, a-deal-here-and-a-deal-there negotiations and the unfair treatment of the investors.