Madam Speaker, my colleague touched on a very important point. We sometimes place too much faith in the institutions or money managers we ask to manage pension funds. The mechanisms in place to prevent missteps are not enforced or are poorly enforced. Consider the small stock market crash of the early 2000s, when pension funds and registered pension plans dropped considerably, but they regained their value in four to six years. This was normal, because the funds were appropriately invested in relation to the businesses or markets that could regain their value.
The problem, and we saw this with the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, is that the so-called experts invested in securities that could collapse without having any basic value. Commercial paper comes to mind. Commercial paper is an obvious example. That is why it is important to secure pension plans above all. RRSPs might need to be treated differently. We need legislation to ensure that workers are the first creditors in line in the event of bankruptcy.