Thank you very much.
I have two comments. The first is with regard to the statement that was made on why we didn't question our LTD benefit.
When I came out of university and joined Nortel, I got all these benefits. I thought they were great. When I looked at the brochures and the glossies, it seemed to me that I was getting an insurance policy, that if I went on disability, I would be insured beyond the life of the employer should they go bankrupt. Everything seemed to look that way. The glossy brochures looked that way. On my T4A statement the payer's name was Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada. Everything looked like that.
We have phoned Nortel HR on several occasions in the last several months to find out if we are insured. We have been given no indication of that. We have not been handed our policies or our contracts--nothing. So we are assuming the worst-case scenario: that we are not insured.
The second thing I'd like to read to you is something that came out of The Economist on May 7, 2009:
On April 30, after the failure of negotiations, Chrysler entered Chapter 11. Under the proposed scheme, secured creditors owed some $7 billion will recover 28 cents per dollar. Yet an employee health care trust, operated at arm's length by the United Auto Workers union, which ranks lower down the capital structure, will receive 43 cents on its $11 billion-odd of claims....
A precedent has been set in the U.S. with regard to giving pensioners and disability people a higher ranking on the creditor list.