Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I wish to thank all the people who are here today for putting a human face to this drama.
It's so unbearable to watch what's happening to the individuals but also to realize, as the CEO of Nortel pointed out, that they approached the Canadian government to try to find a solution that would avoid the breakup and destruction of Nortel, which has generated so much wealth and growth and richness and resources, well beyond its own walls, in the Canadian economy and in the intellectual community. The breakup of Nortel is the Avro Arrow of the 21st century. It's one of those colossal mistakes that get made, and I was really distressed to find out that the door had been slammed on an attempt to come to a solution that would have allowed Nortel to continue as a going concern, as opposed to breaking it up.
Mr. Lyons, thank you for pointing out something that a lot of people don't think about, and that is that the money that goes into pensions is simply forgone income. It's your money, but you're putting it there. It doesn't belong to the employer; it doesn't belong to the employee. It's yours for later use, and you have to be able to call on it.
There's another issue the chairman referred to, and it's worth mentioning now. Because of the size and the scope of the changes Nortel has gone through, the variations, every possible perverse effect has been amplified, magnified—for example, the issue of the phantom income. For people who haven't followed the issue, it's going to be dealt with in September. A lot of Nortel employees bought stock, and there was a deemed disposition at a higher price. It was money they never saw—they're being taxed on it. And as they say at the train stations, be careful, because one train can hide another. Once you think one's gone, in bankruptcy there's a further deemed disposition and people are going to get hit again.
On the severance issue, if you had your severance, you wouldn't be going on EI. You'd be able to live off your severance for that amount of time and have EI at the end if need be. Here people will be immediately going on EI—that was the choice of the government when it turned down Mr. Zafirovski's proposition. There'll be a clawback of that when and if you get even 22¢ on the dollar. It's every possible perverse effect of the system amplified.
Mrs. Urquhart, I want to ask you something. Is it your view that if we gave preferred status to severance and pension benefits over bondholders and unsecured suppliers, it would have been an incentive to seek to maintain it as an ongoing concern, as opposed to going into liquidation? Is that your view?