Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to start with a few remarks. The Liberal Party very clearly recognizes the importance of the knowledge economy for the future of our country, and our leader has very clearly said so on numerous occasions. As we all know, Nortel has more than 5,000 patents and a talented staff of researchers, scientists, engineers and technologists whose jobs are at stake. We should also not forget retirees whose pensions are at risk. This is the largest corporation in Canada in terms of R & D expenditures. When this kind of corporation is being dismantled and is at risk of disappearing, we as parliamentarians definitely all have a duty to examine this extremely important situation for Canada's future.
The Liberal Party very clearly relies on the high technology sector to ensure our country's future prosperity. That's why our leader, Michael Ignatieff, sent a letter to the Prime Minister last week to encourage him very strongly to focus on this issue in view of its importance for Canada and Canadian taxpayers.
With that preamble,
First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Riedel, Mr. Lowe, and Mr. Tay for being here this morning. We very much appreciate the fact that you are here to help us shed some light on what has been happening, as you pointed out, to some extent, in the media or behind closed doors. So we definitely want to shed light on many unanswered questions, and I do appreciate some of the clarifications you have provided.
I'd like to focus my first question on any meetings that have occurred between Nortel and the federal government over the course of roughly the last year and a bit.
When it became clear to Nortel that it was not going to be possible to engineer the turnaround and you began to contemplate options, did Nortel management meet with federal officials? If the answer to that is yes, I would like to hear from you how those meetings unfolded.