Yes.
Thank you very much.
My name is John Farrell, and I am the executive director of Federally Regulated Employers--Transportation and Communications. I'm accompanied today by Mr. Michael Boychuk, president of BIMCOR, which is Bell Canada's pension investment manager. He is also the former treasurer of Bell Canada and BCE. He is well positioned to talk about these matters.
Federally Regulated Employers--Transportation and Communications consists of approximately 600,000 workers employed in the federal jurisdiction. The pension plans managed by these companies are worth approximately $75 billion.
In the last few days, in preparation for these discussions, I've had very interesting conversations with two recognized experts in the area of insolvency and restructuring. They are Mr. Bruce Robertson, who is the chief restructuring officer of AbitibiBowater; and former Judge James Farley, who is the pre-eminent insolvency and restructuring judge in Canada, responsible for the restructuring at General Motors and Air Canada most recently.
If time permits I will describe to the committee my conversations with both of these gentlemen, but at this point, because of time restrictions, I will turn the seat over to Mr. Boychuk.