Probably many of them. It's low interest rates. We all love low interest rates, but low interest rates, at the historical lows that they're at, are actually used for valuing the solvency basis of all these pension plans. That's why the federal government and many of the provincial governments had to make changes to grant temporary solvency relief to many plan sponsors over the last few years, because at the same time that the markets were tanking and the assets were going down in value, these historically low interest rates were being used to value the liabilities of the pension plan. When interest rates go down, the liabilities shoot up, so you get this increasing deficit.
What are some of the solutions? Obviously we'd all like to see the economy turn around and perhaps interest rates edge up somewhat. That'll actually provide some needed relief. But when you get into a situation where an employer becomes bankrupt, that's very problematic. We'd all like to see better funded pension plans, so that even if the company goes under, there's enough money in there to pay the promised pensions.
There has been talk of changes to the bankruptcy act. If you give pension plans a better creditor status in a bankruptcy, I'm not sure what that might do to the cost of borrowing and the cost of capital. There have been some innovative suggestions made by some of the provincial reports, in particular the Ontario Expert Commission report, chaired by Harry Arthurs, suggesting that maybe an Ontario pension agency could take over the assets of an insolvent employer and manage them through to hopefully paying out more than what they might if the plan is immediately terminated.