If anything was done illegally, call the cops.

Otherwise: Dear Nortel employee, your last several years of employment was, well, we're not sure why you were there in the first place, all tens of thousands of you, but the company was imploding. Be thankful your paycheques cleared for as long as they did, thanks to an insane amount of $$ sucked from investors foolish enough to believe, like you, that you worked for a viable company. Your paycheques came from these hosed investors until no more was left. Your pensions are now as poof as the investment of shareholders. As a Canadian, however, you shall not starve, homeless. But the taxpayer of Canada does not owe you a Caribbean cruise to interrupt the monotony of your eight-week sojourn to Florida every year. Deal with it. And get in the proper line as creditors: if there's any flesh left on the skeleton when it's your turn, you may have a nibble.

I think that if there is any lesson from the financial crisis, it is that socializing risks is dangerous. When you give companies and individuals soft landings from fiscal insolvency, it encourages them to take risks. An ironclad pension guarantee is an example of one such thing (particularly when it is at a rate that, for maybe half of all Canadians, would be higher than their actual pension).

What we need is greater individual control over pensions. Individual contributions should not be financing a company's losses elsewhere. Similarly at the federal level, our CPP payments shouldn't be viewed as ordinary tax revenues. Now you can create a big oversight committee, or, you can give individuals the ability to take their money out prior to retirement. I prefer the latter, as it is insulated from regulatory capture – and nobody is better at watching money than the people that rightly own it.

Canadians have unprecedented levels of credit card debt, student loans, etc. Yet most of us are in jobs, paying into pension plans with much lower growth rates than the interest being paid on debt. What we need is real social security reform, not yet another legacy (one which will cost a heck of a lot more than 700 million/year once the boomers retire).

It works both ways, so I wasnt clear enough.

I admit I may be wanting to toss the baby out with the bathwater, but the defined benefit plans are so open to abuse and mismanagement that I think they arent correct. Executive plans seem to be run differently. I must say that I find it offensive that many of the senior guys get these eormous pensions….I dont know why boards dont stand up to them. I would much rathe rthey get their benefit while they work. If those guys cant save for the future with their excess cash then there really is a problem. I would also prefer that public companies pay any pension to executives in stock that they have to hold for their retirement…..maybe they'll take a longer term view of their decisions today.

We still don't follow orders from you.

not sure that you are so much 'throwing the baby out with the bath water' as probably accurately observing that the defined benefits ship has sailed. and i agree that the disparity between the abuse that undermines workers pensions in the face of executive compensation and pensions is breathtaking.

i guess all i want to protect against is that the alternative to a defined benefit is not "pay the employees slightly more" and whatever happens or a minimum threshold of contribution that is in no way adequate to meet the objectives of these plans: to ensure that workers are provided with a modest but comfortable standard of living post-employment.