Thank you, Chair. We will try this one more time.
We heard from multiple witnesses during the course of the study. The same story that we heard and that the ISED departmental officials heard from industry stakeholders was that the risk of unintended outcomes with the superpriority is real and it's large. In fact, we heard from some people that it is basically a foregone conclusion that defined benefit pension plans will disappear in Canada if we don't indulge in a preferred payment rather than a superpriority for pension liabilities.
It's in the interest of all of us to look after Canadian workers and to honour the contributions they have made over the course of their lives. It's our collective responsibility also to protect the jobs of those still working and earning for their families in companies that are the subject of these proceedings.
By making a pension superpriority for unfunded liabilities above that of the secured creditors, we are putting these companies, these employers, at untenable risk for failure and, therefore, job loss and, therefore, a much lesser pension payout than may otherwise be possible in a preferred payment scenario.
I will plead one more time with my honourable colleagues in the opposition parties to heed the important advice that we have heard, to heed the hard math of the situation, which is sometimes at odds with the kind of philosophical position that we all hold, I think, of honouring workers' contributions. However, in the end, we must look after those workers and those retirees in the best way we can and that would be a preferred payment, not a superpriority.