Industry committee  That's exactly right. There's no way of knowing how much these assets could have been sold for.

Industry committee  I'll take a shot at it. I realize you have a difficult job as parliamentarians, and you're trying to do something that's balanced for Canadian society. Sometimes the decisions are very difficult, and the line is very blurred, but when you look at the balance of this bill, I just

Industry committee  I can only speak for my company. It's all the pension funds. It's the existing employees and the retirees.

Industry committee  I don't have the exact statistics for you today, but the number in terms of the solvency is in the 80% range and rising, because as we proceed according to the regulations, we are actually funding over what you would call your normal funding rate. Within four years we'll be funde

Industry committee  Thank you for the question. I think Mr. Manley's points are right on, and it's the same point that Mr. Robertson and I were making earlier. He is talking about the hypothetical; as I said, we've been able to come here this morning and talk to you about the practical situations

Industry committee  Mr. Bouchard, thank you for the question. In the case of Tembec, when we went through our plan of arrangement, basically we had the shareholders and bondholders vote on how to divide up the ownership of the company. The existing shareholders got a very low percentage of the shar

Industry committee  That's correct. All retired employees and all existing employees have 100% of their pension benefits.

Industry committee  It's an interesting trade-off, because the assets would have been liquidated. In other words, they would have been sold. As I said, only 60%, or maybe 70%, of the assets could have been sold, and yes, if the bill were in place, the pension would have been fully funded. However, 3

Industry committee  Tembec wouldn't exist today. A handful of our assets would have been sold off for the benefit of the creditors, whoever they would be, but Tembec wouldn't exist today as a company, and, as I mentioned earlier, many of our jobs would be gone.

Industry committee  I would say it would be 30% to 40% of our 4,000 employees, so you're looking at 1,200 to 1,500 direct jobs and perhaps 6,000 to 8,000 indirect jobs, or something in that range, because of all the indirect spinoff jobs that come out of our industry in forestry.

Industry committee  Well, had the bill been in place, it's very difficult to say, other than that it depends on just how the assets are carved up and how much revenue they would achieve in carving them up. I think the more important point here is that although you're maybe going to save the pensions

Industry committee  My recommendation is that the committee look at the work that's already been done by provincial governments. Mr. Robertson alluded to it earlier. When we fund our pensions—and we have to do our calculations for contributions every year—the laws in most provinces require us to d

Industry committee  Good morning, Mr. Chairman, honourable members, and ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jim Lopez. I'm the president and CEO of Tembec Inc. We are a company that has 5,000 employees worldwide, 4,000 of whom are right here in Canada. My business is the forest products business. We p

International Trade committee  I think it would be attractive, obviously, if you can offset part of the taxes with the currency rates, but the danger is that it could be flipped around and could be worked against Canada, if it's not structured properly. To me, that's not part of the game right now.

International Trade committee  I believe your original question was about these drafts that have come out since the initial framework. Are there some changes or are there some inconsistencies? I can say that in some cases, the drafts that have followed the two-page framework agreement. Some elements are consis