Stephen Harper

[Privilege, May 12th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment on the minister's point of privilege. I did not hear how the minister related this matter to a violation of his privileges.

I would also point out that in his point of privilege he made reference to the non-presence of a member of Parliament, which is out of order.

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, May 12th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, to assist your ruling, it is clear the hon. member for Calgary Centre wants to speak under this rule. He has no intention of moving any amendment and so in no way does he violate the standing order referred to by the member for Kingston and the Islands.

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, May 9th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am almost embarrassed to rise after the speech of the member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell.

His comments clearly indicate the kinds of problems we have. Reform Party members, I will remind members, took pay cuts over the last year. Other members of Parliament did not do that. Members of the Reform Party have committed to opt out of the MP pension plan. We anticipate that very few other members of Parliament will do that. There will be a few honourable people on the other side.

Perhaps one of the reasons Reform Party members are willing to do these things is that unlike the previous speaker and many others on the other side, Reform Party members had no trouble before they were here and will have no trouble after they are here finding other employment and making a decent living.

In any case, let me address the bill before us today, Bill C-85, an act to amend the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, which is of course the MP pension. These amendments have been a long time in coming. For 18 months this government has been promising changes. Finally we see the marginal changes that we see now.

The Reform Party has long called for changes to the overly generous pensions for MPs. Last November 22, I and many of my colleagues spoke in support of the motion of the hon. member for Beaver River, asking the government to replace the current members of Parliament retirement allowance with a plan reflecting the current norms for private sector pensions. This was rejected by both the Liberals and the separatists. Clearly, the Liberals' new proposal, the freedom 55 plan, does not accomplish this.

Before I speak to some of the specifics of this bill in the few minutes I have, I would like to make it clear that I personally would support a fair pension plan. My wife and I just purchased our first home and we are planning for our future, but I could not go home and look my wife or my constituents in the eye if I opted into a plan like the one offered in Bill C-85. Instead, I will put my own money into an RRSP, just like millions of other Canadians, and hopefully the government will not see fit to cut those again, as it has in the past.

Let us take a look at how this plan evolved from the plan introduced by Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent in 1952 to the monstrosity that is proposed today. According to Mr. St. Laurent, the original plan was "to be actuarially sound and a matter that would operate without any further charge on the public funds than the matching of contribution to be made by all members of Parliament".

Mr. St. Laurent indicated that the plan was never really intended at the time to be a pension per se. According to Mr. St. Laurent, it was to provide for members in their later years and to reward them for their public service.

At that time members contributed 6 per cent of what was an annual $4,000 salary in return for an allowance equal to only 4.5 per cent of their indemnity if they retired after serving more than two Parliaments.

In 1963 the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act was amended to require members to contribute 6 per cent of their $12,000 indemnity per annum. Rather than the flat percentage allowance, benefits were increased to 2.5 per cent of the member's annual indemnity up to a maximum of 75 per cent.

In 1965 additional provisions were made for a retirement allowance plan to allow senators to participate at a 3 per cent benefit accrual rate. Members will recall that at that time the term for senators was changed from life to age 75, so for the first time there was provision for retirement in the Senate.

It was really in 1981 that the changes to the benefit rate for MPs began to make this plan the obscene one we have today.

This was when the benefit accrual rate was increased to 5 per cent and the generous inflation protection, the full inflation protection we now have, was implemented.

We can see from the report on the administration of the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act for 1983 that while it varied from year to year, the plan kept up the appearance of a one-to-one member-to-government contribution ratio from 1952 all the way to 1992. However, as we know, this was an illusion due to accounting practices, and it vanished in 1991-92 with the $158 million top-up that was needed to the plan. This actuarial adjustment credit was needed to comply with legislative changes in Bill C-55 at the time requiring that adequate contributions be credited to meet the costs of pension obligations as they accrue.

With this top up, the cost of the plan to taxpayers in the form of interest on the plan was also increased. Many people do not know that the government does in fact pay a generous rate of interest on this account, which is of course a cost to the taxpayers but which is not included in the total cost the government admits is involved in this plan.

With the top up in 1992, the unrecognized cost was $3.4 million. It has gradually escalated to $20.4 million in 1992-93 and then to $23 million in 1993-94. It is also interesting to note that the rate at which the government pays interest into the MP pension plan, about 10 per cent, while not an unreasonable rate, is considerably higher than the 4 per cent it will pay when it returns contributions to members who choose to opt out or who do not meet the six-year vesting period.

Bill C-55 also caused the division of the members' pension plan into two parts to achieve compliance with changes to the Income Tax Act regarding the rules for registered pension plans. Now we have one portion that conforms with rules for registration and the other a "retirement compensation arrangement" that does not. This portion has much higher associated costs for the plan because of the refundable tax paid on it. Bill C-85 does not correct this.

Clearly the 1952 idea of providing politicians with a financial buffer to compensate them for periods of employment uncertainty is contrary to the reality our constituents now face. In the 1990s the concept of job security has all but disappeared, not just for Canadians in the broad workforce but even for Canadians in the most traditionally secure areas of the public sector.

Similarly unacceptable is the argument that MPs are underpaid and thus must get bigger retirement benefits. If the government feels MPs are underpaid, then the government should address that issue in a transparent manner, not through the backward route of an overly generous pension plan. The Reform Party's position on this is clear: there should be no increase in MP salaries or office budgets until this country's budget is balanced.

As many private sector employers and some of the provincial legislatures have obviously realized, this type of plan, a defined benefit plan, is very costly to employers and the costs are difficult to accurately predict. There is no real relationship between how much a member contributes to the plan and the benefits a member receives.

Several provincial governments have recently taken drastic measures to scale back or to eliminate traditional pension benefits for politicians. Prince Edward Island rolled back pension benefits and then wound up the plan completely. Similarly, the Alberta government lowered the benefits for some of the recipients already collecting their pensions and then ended the plan for future MLAs.

It is interesting to note that the benefit accrual rate for Alberta MLAs prior to this roll back was 4 per cent, the rate now being proposed by the government. A study had found that the net value of one year's worth of pension accrual for an MLA was $28,733 under that plan, compared to an equivalent $9,034 in the private sector. For the federal plan we are presently under and under which many members of the House will still collect benefits, this number was $42,741 a year.

The Manitoba legislature will implement reforms far in excess of those proposed by this government following the next election. Their pension plan arrangement will be replaced by an RRSP savings plan arrangement where taxpayers only have to match each member's contribution.

Even here in Ontario the provincial Liberals in their "son of red book" promised that if they are elected they will scrap the Ontario legislative pension plan and replace it with a group RRSP, exactly what the Reform Party proposes. We saw it in 1993 and we are seeing now in Ontario how different Liberals are when they are running for election as compared to when they are actually sitting in a Parliament.

[Petitions, May 5th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it is my duty to present a petition signed by 25 people, mainly from the city of Calgary.

These citizens request that Parliament support laws that will severely punish all violent criminals who use weapons in the commission of a crime; support new Criminal Code firearms control provisions that recognize and protect the right of law-abiding citizens to own and use recreational firearms; and support legislation that will repeal and modify existing gun control laws, which have not improved public safety or have proven not to be cost-effective or have proven to be overly complex so as to be ineffective or unenforceable.

[Questions On The Order Paper, May 1st, 1995]

With regard to the closure of Canadian Forces Base Calgary, ( a ) how much will it cost to clean up the entire base, including both barracks, training grounds, etc., to a state where the grounds could be resold or returned to the lessor, and how are those costs allocated, ( b ) what other similar clean-ups have been done, and how much did they cost, ( c ) what renovations and improvements were done to CFB Calgary in the last year, and how much did they cost, ( d ) what costs will be incurred to move all equipment and personnel from CFB Calgary to Edmonton, ( e ) what changes will be needed at CFB Edmonton to accommodate the personnel and equipment transferred from CFB Calgary, and what are the associated cost estimates, and ( f ) what additional renovations/maintenance costs are anticipated over the next 10 years for CFB Edmonton?

[Social Transfer, April 26th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the best of all possible worlds is apparently the ability of the government to talk out of both sides of its mouth.

My supplementary question is for the same minister. Is the new Canada social transfer designed to strengthen the government's ability to impose federal standards, as the Liberals say in English, or to reinforce areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction, as the Liberals say in French?

[Social Transfer, April 26th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Human Resources Development.

Yesterday in response to a question from the leader of the NDP he said that the new Canada social transfer strengthens the federal ability to ensure the responsibility of the provinces to live up to national principles. He went on to say it gives the continuing ability to ensure that leverage is exercised; in other words, blackmailing provincial governments.

On March 31 the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs said that the budget makes it clear that fewer strings will be attached to the Canada social transfer and went on to say that social transfer strings will be reduced and these requirements will be set by mutual consent.

In the eyes of the government, does the Canada social transfer strengthen or weaken the ability of the federal government to apply federal standards in areas of provincial jurisdiction?

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, 1995, April 24th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, in deference to the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra, I will not ask a question outside the scope of the bill, but rather one within its scope.

He made some comment about the constitutionalizing of these provisions. One thing that is being kept in the bill which is in the existing legislation is the variation of 25 per cent from the quotient for the size of populations of electoral districts. He will also know that in this bill not only do we keep that variation in normal circumstances, but we continue to leave open the possi-

bility of extraordinary circumstances where those variations will get much larger.

The hon. member will know that in the United States the general direction I think it is fair to say has been partly imposed by the courts over time. In the House of Representatives ridings are created that are almost equal in population, of course with their peculiarities which we would not necessarily allow here.

On the question of variation, as an academic expert I would like him to inform the House why we have gone in the direction of allowing very large variations in Canada, whereas the United States with a country of similar size has been able to create constituencies that are virtually equal in size. Would he like to see our country consider moves in that direction in the future?

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, 1995, April 24th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, I support the principle of representation by population in the House of Commons. It is a democratic principle enshrined in the Constitution.

In fact, Quebec could end up with close to 25 per cent of the seats in the House after the proposed redistribution.

In addition, when the hon. member talks about post-Meech Quebec, one thing is clear to me, and that is that Quebecers want to keep their Quebecois and Canadian identity and it is only within a federal state that both will be possible.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, 1995, April 24th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the previous speaker from Cochrane-Superior for his remarks, not because I necessarily agree with them all but because they were on the topic of the bill which has been sadly lacking in this debate.

This is a debate about Bill C-69, an act to provide for the establishment of electoral boundaries commissions and the readjustment of electoral boundaries, specifically to scrap the process under way last year to redraw our boundaries based on the 1991 census and establish a whole new process.

We are now winding up a parliamentary debate on this that started over a year ago which in our view has yielded only minimal improvements to the electoral boundaries process.

The motion that had initiated this bill had asked the procedure and House affairs committee to examine methods of capping and reducing the size of the House of Commons, to improve the process by which boundaries commissioners are selected, to consider how the boundaries commissions conduct their work and to consider the involvement of the public. In three of these areas there were some minor improvements. However, the bill fails to address the already excessive and growing numbers of

members in the House of Commons. That failure in particular prevents our party from endorsing the bill.

The changes made to the boundaries process while useful for future census in our view do not justify scrapping the commission or rejecting the reports of the existing boundaries commissions.

While we are opposing this bill members of the Bloc Quebecois have been opposing this bill for an entirely different reason, one to which I will address my remarks.

The Bloc position on this entire process for bills C-18 and C-69 has been very inconsistent. It supported going through this process and then opposed it again.

Initially the concern was about boundaries. Now the concern is about Quebec's not having a guaranteed 25 per cent of the seats. Under the formula coming forward I will point out what we are actually talking about in terms of substance. We are talking about the demand from the Bloc Quebecois that Quebec be guaranteed 25 per cent of the 301 seats we will have out of this redistribution; in other words 75.25 seats. Quebec will get under the formula 75 seats. This is probably the most verbiage we have expended in the House over one-quarter of a seat.

I am not entirely sure this position is not changing again. Over the Easter break we learned from the leader of the Bloc Quebecois that apparently Quebec now wants 50 per cent of the seats. The position keeps shifting.

I want to address it seriously because there has been much misinformation and many misstatements made about this. I will outline the facts. The Bloc has made at least four assertions which need to be challenged, assertions of fact, assertions directly related to the bill and to the issue of 25 per cent of the seats.

The first and most obvious Bloc assertion is that this kind of guarantee could be achieved without a constitutional amendment. We know that is not the case. This was a provision of the Charlottetown constitutional accord opposed by the Bloc Quebecois which I will talk about later. It was in that accord precisely because it required a constitutional amendment.

The Constitution Act of 1867 lays out the formula for the redistribution of seats in the House of Commons every 10 years. That formula is contained primarily in section 51. Section 52 makes it clear that while the number of seats in the House can be changed, the House is not free to amend its formula in a way that would depart from the proportion of population among the provinces. Section 52 makes clear that principle is protected.

Furthermore, under the Constitution Act of 1982 under section 42(1)(a) the amending formula is explicit that changing the proportion of seats in the House can only be done with a constitutional amendment approved by Parliament and by two-thirds of the provinces representing at least 50 per cent of the population.

The second incorrect Bloc assertion is that under existing constitutional formula only New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island are guaranteed certain representation in the House of Commons. This is also not true. Section 51(a) of the Constitution Act of 1867 makes it clear all provinces are guaranteed in the House of Commons at least the number of seats they have in the Senate. That was a provision added in 1915.

Obviously under that provision it has an immediate effect on the representation of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, whose seats would fall below 10 and 4 respectively if that were not there. It also applies to all provinces. Quebec is in effect guaranteed 24 seats by that provision, many more than New Brunswick or Prince Edward Island, although Quebec has many more seats.

As well, the Constitution Act of 1982, section 41(b), the amending formula, makes it clear this particular provision as it relates to any of the provinces can only be changed with unanimous consent. We are all aware of the difficulties in getting unanimous consent. I will talk later about some of the things we would like to see. Clearly that is not in the cards today if for no other reason than all governments in the country realize they could never get the support of the Government of Quebec for any step, for any constitutional change, for anything positive or negative.

Another point where the Bloc is not correct in claiming that only New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island are protected is there is an additional grandfather clause in section 51 of the Constitution Act of 1867. It is not an especially protected section but it guarantees to all provinces the representation they had in the House of Commons in the mid-seventies, a provision my party does not support and a provision that can be changed through an act of Parliament but which this bill does not change. Under that provision Quebec is guaranteed the 75 seats it has today. Were it not for that provision Quebec's share would probably fall by one or two seats.

The third Bloc assertion in this debate that has not been correct is that the demand Quebec be guaranteed 25 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons is one of the historic demands of the province of Quebec. I found this particularly interesting. I worked for the no side in the constitutional referendum. An argument frequently made both inside and outside Quebec was that this provision of the Charlottetown accord guaranteeing Quebec 25 per cent of the seats had in fact not been a historic demand of the province of Quebec and had

really just come out of the hurried negotiations in the summer of 1992. I decided to do a little bit of research and confirmed that was the case.

Perhaps we have overlooked something, but I cannot find any record of a major Quebec actor demanding a guarantee of 25 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons prior to the Charlottetown accord.

I would say that there are some origins, which may be in the Victoria conference proposal. In 1971 the Victoria constitutional agreement proposed that every province that at the time had at least 25 per cent of the population be guaranteed a constitutional veto indefinitely. This would have given Ontario and Quebec a veto over any changes to the Constitution. Of course it was ironic that that accord also failed, partly because of the attacks by the Parti Quebecois and the separatists in Quebec at the time. But ultimately, the accord was rejected by Quebec federalists as well.

Once again, the fact of the matter, as far as we can tell, is that this is not a historic demand, although like so many things in this country it has become a demand from the very separatist element that rejected it in the first place, much in the way certain versions of the Confederation agreement are now endorsed by the separatists who rejected that agreement at the time.

I want to get to the fourth Bloc contention, that somehow the failure to give Quebec a guaranteed representation in the House of Commons represents a violation of the agreement of Confederation. It is particularly interesting how it can represent a violation of an agreement that never existed. There never was any such provision in the Constitution of 1867.

In making this argument the Bloc Quebecois has pointed out the fact that in the old Canada, the union of the two founding provinces we hear so much about, the union of 1841 to 1867, Quebec had 50 per cent of the seats and there was a dual premiership, as members will recall.

Confederation came about because that arrangement broke down. It was completely unworkable to have the principal House where the guaranteed number of seats is invariant to population and where there will be some kind of equal marriage. It did not work. It brought about Confederation. And if Confederation were ever to fail for Quebec, as the separatists suggest it will, then of course the rest of Canada would never enter into an agreement that would recreate a union that already fell apart in the 1800s.

It is important to remember what the agreement of 1867 did. It did not guarantee Quebec a percentage of seats in the lower House, as we had had prior to 1867. It had three separate elements that dealt much more creatively with the concerns of Quebec and with the other regions and the new partners of Confederation.

First, it created the House of Commons, where representation would be on the basis of population, a principle understood in every democratic country in the world.

Second, it created a federal system. This is something we should not forget. Colleagues in the Bloc always say that Quebec's power at Confederation fell from 50 per cent to 35 per cent. In fact it did not. Its share of the seats at this level of government fell from 50 per cent to 35 per cent, but the most important feature of Confederation was the creation of a federal system and the creation of the province of Quebec as a separate legal entity. The Confederation agreement gave Quebecers local autonomy through their provincial legislature over a number of exclusive provincial jurisdictions.

I should add that my party is opposed to the historic attempts of the federal Liberals to undermine those exclusive provincial jurisdictions. Those jurisdictions should be respected, and in our view the federal spending power should not be used in a way that intrudes upon those exclusive competencies.

Third, the agreement of 1867 created the Senate. It created a separate chamber, one of the purposes of which was to provide guaranteed representation for various regions of the country. I have spoken on this many times, as members will know. That is in fact the chamber where regional representation for Quebec and for other provinces was to be guaranteed.

That part of the accord has not worked out the way the regions of this country would like it to work out. One of the things that constantly mystifies us as western Canadians is the demand of Quebec separatists to abolish the upper chamber, rather than make it the very basis of regional representation that we in the regions of the country want against the enormous population weight of Ontario. That is rejected time and time again, although it is a feature of virtually every democratic federation in the world.

The history of that, I should point out, is quite interesting. Quebec was originally guaranteed 33, a third of the seats in the upper House. Later, as this country grew, as western Canada entered, that guarantee fell to 25 per cent, since we recognized four regions. Today, of course, we have seats for Newfoundland and the territories, which are outside of the original regional agreement.

There has been a guarantee in this Parliament for Quebec to have a certain representation. That representation is guaranteed in the Senate. Our provinces in the west would like to see that chamber become more effective. We would like to see ourselves guaranteed effective representation as well. That is the way to address this issue.

Members will recall that the Charlottetown accord was rejected through most of the country. The Bloc Quebecois, which suddenly finds it is fond of the 25 per cent guarantee in the Charlottetown accord, forgets that that guarantee was part of a package-not just the whole accord, but specifically part of a package of reforms to both the Senate and Commons.

These reforms were rejected for a number of reasons, not simply because of the issue of departure from representation by population but also because of the expansion of the size of the House of Commons, an expansion that would have gone dramatically to 337 members overnight and would have moved even more quickly into the future. That was one reason for rejection, something we are now replicating with this act, although not as badly.

Of course it was also rejected because of the obviously inadequate provisions as they related to the Senate, the failure to guarantee election to the upper House, the failure as well to guarantee effective powers for that body to protect the various regional interests that chamber is supposed to secure.

I do not want to go on too long because I have talked at length over the past year about this bill. We remain opposed to the provisions of this legislation, to the idea that we should scrap the existing boundary commissions and start from scratch. The few worthwhile improvements here can certainly be deferred to the 1996 census. We would save the taxpayers $5 million.

I do want to emphasize that in opposing this bill we in no way endorse the obstructionist tactics of the Bloc Quebecois, who are opposing this bill for entirely different reasons related to the separation of Quebec. The 25 per cent guarantee they have demanded for Quebec and the rationale they have used to back that demand simply do not stand up to factual scrutiny.

I should add in closing that it is increasingly clear that the reason the members of the Bloc Quebecois are so interested in guaranteeing a certain number of seats for Quebec in the House of Commons is that I think they are coming to realize that Quebec will be here in the House of Commons by the time the next election comes around and will be here for many more elections after that. We look forward to that.