The main reason we end up with pension fund underfunding is the Income Tax Act. It's not a provincial responsibility, it's a federal responsibility. It prohibits overfunding pension funds by more than 110%. That's the big problem.
It was stated by Mr. Zafirovski a while ago that Nortel has maintained its payments, but it took a hit. When they were able and they had the funds to put money in the pension fund, they were not allowed to do so because of the Income Tax Act. We've made proposals that it should be raised to 125% instead of 110%.
There's also another proposal, which is far more interesting to companies and the stakeholders, the retirees, and that is to have a superfund that would sit on top. The companies would have the tax breaks, and if the pension fund is fully funded at 100%, then they could start taking money out of the superfund without having to go through all kinds of hurdles.
These are intelligent solutions.
There are also solutions some of our members have looked at that can help our own situation. It may well be, and we certainly don't hope so, that Nortel will not be able to restructure successfully and keep on with the pension fund obligations, so we're going to be faced with a hit. The big problem we have right now is a wind-up. We don't want our plan to be wound up if this happens. Keep it alive.
I do not have the information with me, but we have proposals where that could be done, without hurting the pensioners as much as it is now.