Stock-market losses have caused more than a $2.5-billion (Canadian, or about $2.4-billion in U.S. dollars) hole in the pension plans at a number of Canadian universities, reports The Globe and Mail. Its survey of 20 institutions revealed that most have a substantial pension-plan solvency deficit, which is the amount of money needed to be put into a pension plan to be able to honor all pension payments if the university went out of business. Provincial laws will force the universities to plug that deficit, causing speculation that they will be forced to cut programs and services. The University of Toronto, which had based its financial strategy on aggressive investing, lost 30 percent of its pension and endowment when the market cratered. It now has the largest pension-plan solvency deficit but argues that it is far from going out of business.