Thank you for the question.
As I said before, if we are going to find money to make whole people who belong to defined benefit pension plans that were appropriately managed but invested in the markets that have taken a nosedive so there is a large deficit.... We are not talking here about a bill that's designed to simply ensure that companies make their lawful payments. If we're going to find that money it has to come from somewhere. As I think Diane Urquhart acknowledges, it will partly come from the value of outstanding bonds.
Pensioners and any Canadians who have RRSPs invested in balanced mutual funds, bond funds, or what have you, have money invested in the large pension funds, such as the Canada Pension Plan fund, the teachers' pension fund, the OMERS pension fund, and the Caisse de dépôt. They all invest billions of dollars in Canadian bonds.
Ms. Urquhart, if I understood her correctly, said this bill would not be a problem because it would only reduce the value of those bonds by $7 billion. That's taking money out of investments held by other Canadians and using it to compensate the small minority of Canadians who belong to defined benefit pension plans.