Yes, there is a $100-million reserve for pension plans. There is also a system whereby employees who lose their jobs at age 50 do not have to wait until they are 65 to transfer money into a lock-in retirement account or LIRA. These people can therefore find a job or get employment insurance for a while, and still get their pension at age 55. This system was used when the Domtar plant closed. The half of plant employees who lived in Ontario were able to use this system, but not those who lived in Quebec. The impact is quite significant when someone who is 54 can get their pension at 55 and not have to wait until they are 65.
This illustrates how difficult it is to restructure the markets. We know that some plants have to close, as I was saying earlier. We have been working on consolidation for three years now. In order to allow employees with the most seniority to leave, we even took some of the vacation pay of wage earners to finance those taking early retirement, as a way to avoid or lessen the expected actuarial reduction; we did this because the employer simply had no money. We did virtually everything we could to help older workers leave. The biggest problem is that, once companies come under the protection of the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, they stop paying into the pension plan. This worsens the solvency deficiency, and if the companies later go bankrupt, there is a 30% reduction in the pay cheque for 10,000 retirees in Quebec, as Mr. Auclair said.