Chair, I agree it's extending the scope, but I'm also worried about.... We have been talking with witnesses. We have been talking about pensions and we have been talking about especially those defined benefit pensions. Severance payments are complex in their own right and we haven't had a chance to study them at all or to ask questions of witnesses on this.
I'm concerned about the impact on other creditors and other employees because, again, this has a limited scope to certain employees, mostly those who are unionized. It would not cover those who are not part of a union, if I understand correctly. I'm disappointed that we couldn't discuss this further and that we couldn't ask more questions about this.
All that being said, under the general principles of this legislation and helping pensioners, I totally agree with the principle and I hope that we can find a compromise with the proposed amendment.
Finally, I will just say that there is the wage earner protection program. I know there's a cap of a little over $8,000 to protect those severance payments in case of bankruptcy. I thought it would have been the right vehicle if we wanted to increase this.
For all those reasons, I would hope that we could debate this issue of severance payments at another time with the proper legislation.