Mr. Chair, I have been on the record as being sympathetic to the concerns raised by members of the government on this point, but there are a couple of issues, or facts, that I think are important to consider.
This bill passed in the House in June and the government has had a considerable amount of time to consider amendments to change or continue to respect the spirit of the bill. I'm not sure that this proposed amendment does that. I do think there may be some unintended consequences or potential, but we asked very specifically about the size and scope of the problem with both government officials and industry.
The truth is defined benefit pension plans are already deteriorating or closing in this country at a substantial pace irrespective of this bill, so we asked how many more would be impacted. Is there potential? How many companies could negatively be affected? We didn't really get much information back on how many. We could maybe think about how to protect some of those companies—maybe there are 100, maybe there are 50—and we could think about how to carve some of them out of legislation, but we weren't really presented with an opportunity to do that.
I don't believe this amendment continues to respect the initial spirit of the bill.