This amendment in fact reveals the strength of their convictions on this objective.
Bloc members' intention to guarantee their own Canadian pension or participate in this retirement pension plan indicates a lack of confidence in the possibility of separation. I suppose there is an element of sacrifice in the sovereignty project. Interestingly enough, the Bloc Quebecois is proposing putting Quebecers in a position to lose the benefits of Confederation, including pension benefits, but is pushing here for the adoption of the Parliament's pension plan.
I would suggest that one way to show their good faith in the matter would be to vote for this amendment and to support the idea that things like pensions need to be negotiated, if, by chance, Quebec should really separate after the referendum.
It will be interesting. I doubt the Bloc will be prepared to take such a daring step in the House of Commons.
The effect of Motions Nos. 1 and 6 are to change the opting out provisions so members of future Parliaments can make a one time decision to opt in or out of the plan during the first 60 days the House sits after they are elected. Reform MPs will save taxpayers over $38 million by opting out and clearly in the absence of substantive changes to the plan future parliamentarians must have this option as well.
We will keep in mind that the failures of the government are starting to add up. While it may reject some of the populist measures used by my party I expect the next federal election to
be very much a referendum on issues like MP pensions. I do not believe by any means this issue will go away even if government members defeat this amendment.
We will see as in the Ontario election this is a hot issue and will still be a hot issue in the next federal election. Voters will ask for members to cut their pensions without any increase in pay, a suggestion which I think is perfectly reasonable.
Motions Nos. 2 and 3 change the bill so that a member who dies before the expiry of the 60-day decision period is assumed not to have opted in. Bill C-85 automatically opts these people in. I guess Reformers would rather assume the best of people than the worst of people.
It seems strange the government would make the default option here an assumption of action of opting in. I understand a lot of pressure is being placed on backbench Liberals to opt into this plan so the driving forces of the plan, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, do not look too bad. Forcing dead MPs to opt into the pension plan is taking the idea of party discipline to new heights or to new depths even for the Liberal Party.
We know who will bear the brunt of the public backlash of this in the next election. It will be the Liberal backbenchers who did not really support the plan, who were told to participate and who if they lose the election will lose all pension in any case. This is really a remarkable coincidence of both lack of intelligence and lack of integrity coming together on an issue.
Motions Nos. 5 and 7 change the bill to allow all members to opt out completely. Under Bill C-85 MPs who as of October 1993 already had six years of service could only opt out of benefits earned after the last federal election, thus creating the terms trough regular and trough light which we like to refer to, the two tier system.
We have talked already about how this inability for longer serving MPs to completely opt out of Bill C-85 creates the two tier system. However, this is a minor issue in my opinion. The real issue is the two tier system between MP pensions and what is available to other Canadians.
One of the witnesses who testified before the committee which studied this bill, and I use the term studied very loosely, Mr. Brian Corbishley of Edmonton, testified the pension proposed under Bill C-85 is about seven times more generous than a typical public sector plan and four times more generous than a typical private sector plan. Mr. Corbishley's testimony and others should be listened to much more carefully and much more seriously than some of the government members seem to take this issue.
In Alberta Mr. Corbishley's firm, Peat Marwick, proposed a pension scheme for MLAs much less generous than that which existed in Alberta at the time. The plan in Alberta at the time was almost identical to what the government is now proposing.
In the heat of the pre-election build up in Alberta the government refused to significantly alter that plan to deal with the objections of taxpayers and citizens and it was increasingly looking like that government would face defeat in the election. Ultimately Mr. Klein ended up abolishing the plan, a major factor in his winning the election and doing some of the good things in Alberta he is now trying to do.
What is interesting about this, and I urge Liberal members to consider it very carefully, is ultimately a half hearted attempt to reform the MLA pension plan in Alberta resulted in MLAs in Alberta having no pension plan whatsoever, a situation which I do not think is ideal but which will result if the government follows the course it is on.
I urge members once again to consider some of these amendments. They will significantly alter the bill to make it more acceptable to the public. Ultimately the public will find this bill unacceptable. We know the MP pension plan will die because of the unreasonable form it is in today. It will die in any form and there will be no increase in compensation that the members on the other side so earnestly desire and do not deserve.
In any case, I ask them to consider these amendments and I thank them for their patience.
