Thanks, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the comments, and I appreciate your desire to push ahead with it. I do have to agree with my colleagues. I was very pleased to sit with Mr. Duvall and get to know him on the Canada Post tour, and I have a lot of respect for him. Although we don't necessarily share the same political views, I very much believe that he shares with all of us in this room a desire to help Canadians. I watched him stand again and again, and ask for hours on end in the House about this adjustment that they'd like to see made. I think we can say very clearly that we didn't get a clear answer back. We just heard, “You hate CPP, if you don't support us”.
I'm very disappointed that we can sit here, and every time we bring forth something you disagree with, we get lobbed at us, “Oh, you hate CPP”. I think when I spoke about this bill, one of the members stood up and said, “Why do you hate CPP? You'd like to destroy it altogether”. We're not going to get any further forward if every time we have a disagreement with something, one side, instead of agreeing to discuss it, immediately sets out to destroy it.
I also pointed out you used the words, “I think it's rich” that we want to discuss it. I will use these exact same words. Just last week, we had a private member's bill in the House supported by financial agencies, think tanks, and also the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, which would help every single senior today, not 40 years down the road when this bill suggests and not some fantasy that the OAS is going to change tomorrow, which this government seemed to be peddling. Without even getting a chance to discuss it, members of your government, one of them right here, stood up and said, “We will not support it”. The NDP would support it. CARP supports it. Without even, as the NDP was saying, pleading, letting it get to discussion, your government arbitrarily, for partisan reasons, said, “Hey, let's just throw it down.”
Again, it's very rich for your folks to say, “We're the only defenders of the handicapped. We're the only defenders of CPP.” It's very disingenuous and it does all of us a disservice, when we're elected to be here to support and represent all Canadians, to sit there and try to shout down opposition or gut someone's amendment on the suggestion that you're the only defenders of CPP. I think it's very wrong and against democracy.
I just do not understand the purpose of not allowing his motion to stand for a vote or your having to gut it. I think it's very incorrect.
Getting back to the CPP thing, we very much care for seniors. I was the head of a foundation for six hospitals for the elderly in a past life, which is why I put through the very important and very widely supported private member's bill to assist all seniors, which I hope the Liberals will have a change of heart with and support for all seniors.
The reason we did not support Bill C-26 fully—