Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to welcome our witnesses here this morning. Thank you all for coming and helping us through this relatively difficult piece.
The issue of solvency is on the table, but there's one area that the Pension Investment Association of Canada brought forward that you're all more than welcome to comment on. I am not sure where I stand on it, so I'm going to ask the question. I'm going to give you an example that happened to me personally—which my colleagues know I like to do. At one time I was a member of OMERS, and I was a member of a municipal council. A payment holiday came along. The members of OMERS didn't have to pay for a couple of years, and the cities didn't have to pay their portion, because they were over-subscribed and had too much money in the system. Wisely or unwisely, I won't say which, the council of the day decided we were not going to collect the money from the municipal taxpayer and the savings would be passed on to the tax base. The staff wanted to continue to collect the money and save it for a rainy day. Whether this was right or wrong, I'm not sure.
Right now there is a 110% limit. You're advocating going to at least 125%. Is there any argument that there shouldn't be a limit at all? When things are great, we could continue to collect money and keep it in the fund. Then when things go badly, as they always do sometimes, the money would be there for that rainy day. If this were the case, we might not be in the same trouble that we're in today. Let's face it, the economy goes up and down; it has never stopped going up and down.
So why 125%? Why not no limit? You could continue to collect on defined benefit plans.