Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Mr. Zafirovski and Mr. Tay.
Obviously, Nortel has a significant impact on this region and many regions across the country. I'm from the Belleville, Quinte region. Nortel has had a long and storied history there, so I can assure you that I've heard from many of the retirees, pensioners, and of course former executives of Nortel.
There's isn't a person around this table who doesn't realize that the best pension guarantee that exists, of course, is a successful and profitable company. But we also understand that when difficulties do occur, pension guarantees do fall under the responsibility of the provinces. People ask if the federal government is off the hook, and I say, quite frankly, no, we have responsibilities as well. I think we, as federal legislators, have a responsibility to provide a regulatory environment that serves the best interests of both corporate and employee groups. Our purpose here today is to listen to the various perspectives, to see if we can come forward and deal with potential legislation and/or enforcement and/or guidance that we could provide that would be of benefit to both groups going forward.
As we travel through this difficult period, I personally--and a number of my colleagues and certainly my constituents from Belleville and many in the Ottawa capital region I've had direct contact with, and my colleagues as well--believe that more clarity is needed. The rumour mill reigns supreme on a little bit of everything, but when people are directly affected personally we really have to get to the very bottom of it to make an intelligent decision.
While Nortel was seriously reducing or in many cases eliminating pension benefits, I'd like to know.... I have three or four quick questions, and maybe you can give me a true or false to them, if you wish, and then we can move on rather quickly.
In the current job market--it's a tight job market out there--do you really believe it was necessary to offer large bonuses, given this market, simply to retain the people you have?