Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our officials for appearing with us here this afternoon. I will ask my questions, but feel free to delegate them as you wish, depending on your area of expertise.
I'm hoping to get a discussion on.... We've heard some questions about unintended consequences and potential liquidity issues or lending issues of those organizations that might be close to insolvency now if these rules were to come into force.
The question is more around a sizing of this problem. I heard some stats. There are about 400 defined benefit pension plans, 7% of which are federally regulated. Are there any studies, any information that can be shared with this committee, that have looked at the number of companies that would be affected by this legislation and/or the number of companies that may, in an unintended way, be negatively impacted by this legislation? For example, they might have a challenge getting credit.
Do we have an idea of the size of the issues that we're dealing with?