OSFI, the federal regulating agency, can advise you on the exact number of federally regulated companies that have solvency deficiencies and the percentage of those deficiencies. That data is available.
What would happen is that every single company that has a defined benefit pension plan and that will have a solvency deficiency will have greater difficulty raising capital when it needs to raise capital, because this bill will make their companies more risky.
If you are a company that has, like many of the companies in the pulp and paper industry, like many large Canadian companies in the mining industry, large solvency deficiencies, this bill will create a situation in which if they were on the cusp of bankruptcy they would not be able to get the funds that are necessary. As Mr. Robertson said to me last night, we would not have been able to restructure, if this bill were in place.
So in a sense, while it is intended that this bill protect employees and protect pensioners, it will unfortunately push over the edge companies that are scrambling to restructure, and there will be real losses in employment across this country. The other thing that will happen is that employees across the country who enjoy very handsome defined benefit pension plans today will not have them anymore, because their boards of directors will say, these plans now, with Bill C-501, have far more risks than they used to have, and we're getting out of them. So for hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have fantastic pension plans today and are working for companies that can sustain those plans forever, this bill will kill them, period.