Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thank you to our witnesses. I beg your forgiveness if I focus on Mr. Howard. I think that in the last year I've spent more time with actuaries and pensioners than I have with my wife, so I will probably focus my questions on you.
You had some interesting comments, and I appreciate your input throughout the whole process. Your association has been very helpful on this process.
I want to point out one thing. Maybe I didn't hear you correctly, but I thought you said there's been no meeting of finance ministers or pension ministers. There have actually been two. In December in Saskatoon the federal finance minister had commissioned two papers from experts, Claude Lamoureux and Jack Mintz.Those papers were presented because he was concerned about pensions at that time. That paper came out early in the year and was what spawned the cross-country consultation process. It was then followed up with the report on that consultation process, which went back to that same group of finance ministers in May of last year.
There will actually be a summit of finance ministers. Not everybody understands, although I'm sure you do, that in some provinces it's not necessarily the finance minister who is responsible for pensions, but all the minsters responsible for pensions will convene a meeting. There's a summit of those ministers in December. The findings of the research working group will be reported back then. That is just a clarification to make sure everyone understands that.
With regard to the employer-sponsored pension security trust, one of the big arguments or concerns I heard was over who owns any surplus, if you will. Who would own this trust? If it's tax-exempt, I would assume that the sponsor owns it, but there were certainly some arguments among different groups. Can you tell us who owns that and who can utilize it?