Hon. Lucie Moncion: Would the senator agree to take a question?

Senator Moncion: You talked about the education sector. Several teachers came to talk to us about the importance of making sure there’s nuance to this clause when it comes to the education system. We know that sometimes some children need to be restrained, if you will, because they get extremely violent and they lose control of their emotions.

I don’t know whether you have any comments to make on these restrictions that seem to concern the education sector.

Senator Moncion: Do you agree that using a federal law to correct a provincial problem could be a problem? This is something that we are studying within my office, these jurisdictional issues. But would you agree?

Hon. Lucie Moncion: I have a couple of questions for you.

I want to thank you for the excellent speech. The information that was brought forward is information brought forward after I started speaking on Bill S-215.

There is one situation with the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, and the problem is that when you use this act, the larger creditors are the ones who usually get the money and the smaller creditors will not get the money because there is not going to be anything left at the end following the sale of assets, if it goes there.

What has happened — it’s the same situation that has happened at Nipissing University, which is the university where I live, and I was on the board of directors at Nipissing. I was there before 2010.

My question is that the deficits that were brought forward at Laurentian were exactly the same as the one at Nipissing, but Nipissing went to the government and Laurentian went to the government — but very late in the game — so the government did not have enough time to react and within a month Laurentian became involved with the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.

I wanted to know if you were aware of that situation because it is in the report that you read. Do you agree with me that when they are a provincial entity and there is the use of a federal law, there could be a constitutional issue, like you said? But someone is paying down the line, and I think that small creditors are footing the bill here. There are a lot of things that I am providing here, but I would like to hear you on these few issues.