Finance committee  Nortel is junk bond, Atlas--

Finance committee  Nortel has been junk bond since 2002, so all those who currently own the Nortel bonds would not be investment-grade owners. They were long gone at the end of the tech wreck. Therefore, in terms of the cost of capital, there's no question.... If you have a car accident and there's damage to the car, there is damage to the car, but only a certain percentage of society gets into car accidents.

Finance committee  Intuitively you think it must have a material impact on the cost of capital. For me it's the opposite. In the investment-grade markets over any 10-year rolling period in the last century, only 4% of investment-grade corporations become bankrupt. In the junk bond market, 26% become bankrupt.

Finance committee  Good afternoon. Canada lags the world in its protection of terminated employees, pensioners, survivors, and long-term disabled employees during bankruptcy. I did a study over the Christmas and New Year season and found that 40 out of 53 countries studied by the OECD have preferred or better status for employee benefits, or they have a public pension benefit guarantee insurance program.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  I would make a point that there is systemic fraud in the investment products sold by the investment banks and banks of Canada. This fraud produces profits that are not taken to tax havens. These profits show up simply as return on equity for the banks and improved share prices. So from that perspective, I would say no.

Justice committee  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. If I can, I would request of the French-speaking members of the committee that I may pass out this presentation I'm going to speak to today. Otherwise, I'll just start.

Justice committee  Okay. The reason we don't have it in French is that we were only invited on Thursday of last week. Unfortunately, we had a very short period of time to prepare. Otherwise, I certainly would have liked to make that available. On Friday, November 20, 2009, PricewaterhouseCoopers released its global economic crime survey, and it determined that Canada is the fourth most fraudulent country out of 54 countries.

Finance committee  I would say that if you did an emergency amendment in this case, I guess I would be shocked to see that the debt holders wouldn't want to go to the ongoing concern plan, because if all of the $3 billion to $4 billion—that's my estimate, whatever it is—of deficits.... The proceeds of the sales will not leave anything for the debt holders.

Finance committee  Thank you. I just want to make the point that Australia made an amendment of its bankruptcy acts on a live case in order to give priority status to pension fund deficits. So we do have a precedent in the world. Sweden, Korea, and Japan are among a number of countries who give preferred status to severance and pension fund deficits.

Finance committee  A $200 million debtor-in-possession line of credit has been offered by Nortel Networks Inc. The beneficiary of that is Nortel Networks Limited, which is the Canadian operation. This is typical financing. In the first days of the bankruptcy protection filing, the court granted that they would have preferred status above all unsecured creditors.

Finance committee  Basically we're asking for the BIA amendment. We're asking that Mr. Clement be required to set conditions on the pending sale of businesses by the Canadian-based international company so that a substantial portion of the proceeds does not go to the debt-holders of Nortel, but goes to the pension fund and to pay the severed workers.

Finance committee  I'm an independent financial analyst. Nortel was operating at a cost structure above what its revenues could support, and it's burning cash at the rate of $1 billion annually. All the figures I'm giving today are in U.S. dollars. The financial crisis is causing a large drop in telecommunications equipment sales throughout the world, and Nortel, due to the uncertainty of whether it's liquidating or not, is having its revenues decline at a much greater rate than its peers in the industry.

Finance committee  I have a letter from Dean Buzza from approximately December 13, 2008. It was in response to our request on behalf of a number of ABCP victims that the RCMP conduct a criminal investigation of the asset-backed commercial paper on the basis of our allegations of fraud with respect to the contracting of the ABCP.

Finance committee  Yes, I can table that.