While waiting for the Bank Street bus this morning I ran into a friend who has a partner at Nortel, a big employer here in Ottawa, and perhaps the most important single company on the Toronto Stock Exchange. She told me that morale at the company is extremely low right now. A thousand people are being laid off next month just in Ottawa; my friend's partner has had his group cut by 80%. Rumours are circulating that Nortel doesn't have enough money to pay out severance packages, and that laid-off techies are simply abandoning morgaged houses in the west end.