Thanks very much, Chair.
Thanks again to the witnesses for joining in person and virtually.
I don't think there's a person in the room or on the call who disagrees with the notion that we need to do better for Canada's pensioners, and that the money or equity they've put into these companies is their own to withdraw in their retirement. Of course, the money they pull out is not just the money they put in; it's also the money being earned by current employees and by the ongoing work of the company while the pensioners are in their retirement.
What we're hearing—fairly clearly, I think—is that pensions are a superpriority for pensioners, but despite how morally connected pensioners might feel to that, or how right it is that they get their full pension, or how much bargaining clout it might give them if they're in a superpriority position, that doesn't change the cold hard math of what happens when a company has to pack up entirely and is not able to restructure because of a pension superpriority. There's what we feel is right, and then there's the math. This is the space we're in right now.
The picture that emerges in our conversation today is that we're hearing from two sides of this. There's the side, perhaps, of the Association of Canadian Pension Management, which is speaking on behalf of the employers—the companies and the people who are manufacturing and producing goods—and then there's the side of the people who are speaking on behalf of the pensioners at the other end of that machine, receiving what is rightfully theirs. What we're hearing from the first group is that the machine is put at risk by pension superpriority.
I'd like to go to Andrea Boctor and Ross Dunlop, if I could, to bring it back to practicalities. We'll go back to the cold math, if you will.
Right now, the bill puts pensioners in a superpriority position over secured and unsecured creditors. Can I ask for your opinion on making an amendment to the bill that introduces a capped superpriority? We've seen this in other jurisdictions. It would still put the pensioners ahead of secured and unsecured creditors and so forth, but it would be capped and it would increase the chances and the runway for companies to restructure.
Can I get an opinion on that?