During the 1990s, when I was working at the Teachers' Pension Fund, we had advised the Government of Ontario, and the union, to build surpluses. We knew then, during the 1990s, that returns were higher than we were anticipating. Yet, it was very easy to say that profits would be increased by spending the surplus posted by the fund. And that is how we found ourselves with equal assets and liabilities, at the start of the most recent crisis.
It was something that we were able to predict, and that we published in our annual reports, year over year. Nobody wants to listen to that kind of message when times are good, because people think good times will last forever. Yet, that is not the case. One cannot schedule when a crisis will hit, but one can predict that it will indeed occur.