Thank you for the question.
First of all, are we talking about a situation in which the employer did not make the required contributions to the plan, and did not forward the contributions made by the employees? The Nortel case is a tragic one. A lot has been said about it. It was the worst kind of perfect storm, if you will.
But the reason we are talking here about pension deficits and what to do about them is not that contributions are not being made on behalf of employees and employers. It is because the value of the investments in those plans and investments on behalf of employees in everything from bonds to equities and other securities fluctuates. The reality is that in the years we're talking about, every Canadian who invested in the markets, every Canadian who invested through an RRSP or a defined contribution plan took what Mr. McCracken correctly calls a haircut.
In the case of Nortel, unfortunately the music stopped for a variety of reasons, which I won't rehash right now—and we're talking about a company that was clearly badly run—but the music stopped at absolutely the worst point in the economic cycle, the time of a worldwide financial crisis and huge losses in equity markets.