Bill C-28 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act, the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act and the Salaries Act

Parliament Of Canada Act

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

moved:

That Bill C-28, in Clause 4, be amended by deleting lines 17 to 24 on page 3.

[Val Meredith, Canadian Alliance, South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, BC]

moved:

That Bill C-28, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing line 19 on page 3 with the following:

“Senate or of the House of Commons who has been elected by (other”

[Ken Epp, Canadian Alliance, Elk Island, AB]

moved:

That Bill C-28, in Clause 4, on page 3, be amended by deleting lines 9 to 24.

Mr. Speaker, since we have already voted on identical wording twice I suggest we just let it go on division.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

moved:

That Bill C-28, in Clause 4, be amended by deleting lines 9 to 16 on page 3.

[Val Meredith, Canadian Alliance, South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, BC]

moved:

That Bill C-28, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing line 11 on page 3 with the following:

“Senate or of the House of Commons who has been elected by secret ballot (other”

[Jim Pankiw, Canadian Alliance, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

moved:

That Bill C-28, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing line 39 on page 2 with the following:

“(a) the Speaker of the Senate, 15 per cent;”

That Bill C-28, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing line 44 on page 2 with the following:

“20.4 per cent;”

That Bill C-28, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing line 2 on page 3 with the following:

“Commons, 10.7 per cent;”

That Bill C-28, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing lines 4 and 5 on page 3 with the following:

“the Whole House of Commons, 4.3 per cent; and”

That Bill C-28, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing line 8 on page 3 with the following:

“mons, 4.3 per cent;”

That Bill C-28, in Clause 4, be amended by deleting lines 9 to 24 on page 3.

Mr. Chairman, I do not know whether it is within your ability to do this but of all my amendments to clause 4 there is only one on that I wish a recorded vote. If you wish to group the others and are able to do that it may expedite the process.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Charlevoix, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to make a few remarks in committee of the whole on Bill C-28 concerning the salaries of the members of the House of Commons. This bill will allow elected members to decide whether or not to receive the salary increase.

No member of this House should be able to say he is against this bill and then laugh all the way to the bank to cash his paycheque once the government party, with the support of the Bloc, has passed Bill C-28.

Members will remember that during the 35th parliament, Reform members boasted that they would not be joining the members pension plan because they thought it was way too generous. At the time, all the members who were under the leadership of the Leader of the Opposition rejected the pension plan for members.

After the 36th parliament, and now in the 37th parliament, Alliance members have all adhered to the members' pension plan, one after the other. The bill before us basically says “If you agree, you sign the form and you will get it”.

The problem with the Canadian Alliance Party is that its caucus remains very divided. Half of its members want the raise, but because of the party line or because of a directive from the party, caucus members are stuck with the instructions that were issued.

This is evidenced by the fact that yesterday, at second reading, the Alliance members who left the caucus—and are now sitting along the curtains—voted in favour of Bill C-28, because they are not bound by a decision made by the leadership of the caucus.

Again, I tell Canadian Alliance members “Be honest, be transparent. If you vote against the raise, I hope that later you will not sign the form and cash your cheque at the bank”.

[Bill Blaikie, NDP, Winnipeg—Transcona, MB]

moved:

That Bill C-28, in Clause 2, be amended by replacing line 20 on page 2 with the following:

“is equal to 45.8 per cent of the remuneration”.

Mr. Chairman, it is certainly a rare occasion for me to find myself in agreement with the member for Saskatoon—Humboldt. This day will go down in infamy.

Our party has an amendment which is similar, not numerically similar but in the same ballpark, and it would have the effect of reducing the raise from 20% to 10%. We do this because we feel that this is the kind of raise that could be justified given certain indicators.

We do not understand the rationale for a 20% increase. We think a lot of Canadians feel likewise. We understand the rationale in a technical sense because the government has paid the Prime Minister a certain amount equal to the chief justice, then it has worked its way down in terms of percentages and arrived at a certain number, and that number is a 20% increase over what members are now making. We understand how it got there, but we share the feeling of a lot of Canadians that a 20% raise is incomprehensible to them when they know what kind of percentage increases they are being offered at the bargaining table. It is for this reason we signal our intention that we would be much happier with a 10% raise, and feel much more comfortable with it than a 20% raise.

In doing this we are acting in a way that is somewhat contradictory in a sense, but I think we are acting in that contradictory way because a lot of us have said we need to have this taken out of our hands and have someone else make the recommendation. We have a commission before us and all of us here have moved amendments to change the recommendations that have been made by this independent body, so we are all a bit guilty of this.

The government has not brought in a bill that is identical to what Mr. Lumley and the hon. member for Elk Island recommended. There are Alliance amendments, Conservative amendments and NDP amendments. All of us want to tinker with this independent recommendation, each in our own way. For me it just points out the reason why the part of the bill that takes it out of our hands forever is a good part of the bill, because we are setting up a mechanism now with which we will not be able to tinker in the future.

The fact of the matter is that it does not matter how independent a report it is and how well written it is, when it gets to the floor of the House we will all have our opinions on what should be changed in it. Therefore, it becomes politicized no matter how hard we try not to politicize it.

I say this by way of wanting to put on the record one more time the fact that we support the way in which the bill finally does what the NDP has been asking for for many years, and on the basis of which sometimes in the past we have voted against salary increases because we have said that this does not remove it from us, and it means that we would have to go through this again. Finally, this time we have a process by which we will not have to go through this again.

I would warn members that if the independent commission that settles judges salaries and if judges salaries start to go through the roof, there will be politics again, because we always have the possibility of changing the mechanism. In other words, we never completely evade responsibility for this. However, I think we go some way toward creating a situation in which we will not have to have this kind of tension again. Hopefully we will not have the kind of silliness that the member for Portage—Lisgar refers to. I and my party agree with him and others who have criticized the government for bringing in this opting in clause.

I just wanted to put on the record that all of us are tinkering with the commission report. We are very good at pointing out when the government does it or when somebody else does it. However, the Conservatives have disagreed with the provision to pay chairs and they have brought in amendments on that score. The Alliance has other concerns about the report. We are all guilty of tinkering with the report.

We have the ability to change the report. The government has the ability to change it by virtue of using its majority. We all have the ability to change it by agreeing with each other. I would urge members to consider the wisdom of having a 10% increase as opposed to a 20% increase.

(Progress reported)

[Jim Pankiw, Canadian Alliance, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

moved:

That Bill C-28, in clause 2, be amended by replacing line 21 on page 1 with the following:

“commencing April 1, there shall be paid to”

That Bill C-28, in Clause 2, be amended by replacing lines 15 and 20 on page 2 with the following:

“is equal to 44 per cent of the remuneration”

Mr. Chairman, the most significant amendment I have proposes that the salary increase for members of parliament and senators would be restricted to 2% as opposed to 20%. The rationale for that is that is what was proposed to the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

Furthermore, that future increases, which was my amendment to clause 1, would not be tied to the salary of the chief justice but rather would be the aggregate average percentage in the wage increases earned by members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. This is a fair reasonable approach and something I believe the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has said would be fair and reasonable.

My first question to the minister is, how can he feel that it is justified for members of the House to take a 20% increase in salary when those same members have failed to provide a salary increase to taxpayers in the form of a substantive tax cut? I think taxpayers will find the taking of a 20% salary increase to be offensive based on the fact that they themselves have not been given that type of an increase in the form of a tax cut.

My second question is, because the bill proposes to extend a stipend to chairs and vice-chairs of committees that heretofore has not existed, does the minister not view that as just another extension of the ability of the Prime Minister to exert influence and control over his own members? Of course one of my amendments would be to repeal that stipend.

My third question for the minister deals with the opt in clause. Does he not see that as somewhat political grandstanding? In effect, what that would do is set up a two tier salary system for members of parliament. Does the minister feel that some members of the opposition, who may choose to not opt in, deserve less salary than members of his own caucus? I am thinking in particular of the member who helps his constituents depending on whether or not they vote Liberal and the member who makes up allegations of racism in British Columbia.

Regrettably, my amendment, which dealt with changing the retroactivity to go back only to April 1 as opposed to January 1, was ruled out of order. I had to refer to it in general because there was not a specific clause to refer to. Does the minister not think that the retroactivity is excessive?

Finally, because some members are curious about this, I would like the minister to clarify the opting out provisions. If some members opt out, then seek re-election and are re-elected, would they remain opted out or would they be in? The bill does not seem to be clear on that. It states that elected members would be in, but what about members who previously were members?

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

moved:

That Bill C-28, in Clause 1, be amended by replacing line 8 on page 1 with the following:

“54.1(1) Commencing in the 38th Parliament”

Mr. Chairman, the amendment that I move with respect to the first clause of Bill C-28 ties into subsection 54.1(1) with respect to the commencement date of the remuneration reference amount.

The amendment would essentially post-date or stale-date the commencement of the bill and the effect it would have on members of parliament and members of the Senate and the rate of pay they would receive. The amendment would state specifically:

“54.1(1) commencing in the 38th parliament”.

It would take effect after the next election. Therefore members of parliament would not be put into the spectacularly unpopular position of conflict of interest by voting for themselves. In essence we would be setting the rate of pay for future parliaments.

It is a very straightforward amendment. It deals specifically with the starting date for the new rate of pay. It is consistent with the position taken by the Progressive Conservative Party in the campaign. It was in fact found in our platform document. I suggest the amendment would be much more palatable to Canadians in the sense that we would not be voting on our own rate of pay but setting the rate of pay for future parliamentarians.

It is consistent with the rest of the bill. It would also continue to be in sync with the remaining provisions of the bill which would take it out of the hands of future members of parliament and tie them into the Judges Act. Therefore I suggest the amendment should receive the support of all members.

[Jim Pankiw, Canadian Alliance, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

moved:

That Bill C-28, in Clause 1, be amended by replacing lines 8 to 15 on page 1 with the following:

“54.1(1) Subject to subsection (2), the remuneration reference amount is equal to the amount of the annual salary, as of April 1, 2001, of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

(2) The remuneration reference amount shall be increased each year beginning on April 1, 2002, by the aggregate average percentage in the wage increases earned by the members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada.”

That Bill C-28, in Clause 1, amended by adding after line 15 on page 2 the following:

“(a) to members of Senate equal to 44”

[The Chairman]

I am now ready to proceed with the consideration by the committee of the whole of Bill C-28.

The Chair has received 56 motions in amendment: 10 from the hon. member for Ottawa West—Nepean, 9 from the hon. member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, 28 from the hon. member for Saskatoon-Humboldt, 1 from the hon. member for Kootenay—Boundary—Okanagan, 1 from the hon. member for Elk Island, 2 from the hon. member for South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, 1 from the hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona and 4 from the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough.

All motions in amendment have been examined as to their procedural admissibility and the Chair finds them to be in order, with the exception of one from the hon. member for Saskatoon-Humboldt and the one from the hon. member for Kootenay—Boundary—Okanagan.

In the case of the amendment of the hon. member for Saskatoon-Humboldt, it is incorrect as to form. In the case of the amendment of the hon. member for Kootenay—Boundary—Okanagan, it is importing the provisions of another act into the bill which is beyond its scope.

Copies of all the receivable amendments are available at the table for interested members.

I want to take a few minutes to explain how the committee of the whole will be proceeding this afternoon.

Pursuant to the order made by the House on Monday, June 4, the committee will spend no more than one hour on consideration of clause 1. Then, the committee will proceed to subsequent clauses, which shall be subject to debate and amendment.

At exactly 5.15 p.m. I will interrupt debate to put all questions necessary to dispose of committee stage. This includes disposing of questions on all clauses and any amendments moved. I wish to alert all members that the bells are not rung in committee of the whole to warn members that the questions are being put.

All amendments received by the Chair will be put to the committee for a decision at the appropriate place in the bill, whether or not they have been debated. Members must be present to signify that they wish to have their amendments moved. If a division is requested, it is carried out as a standing vote and the names of members voting yea and nay are not recorded.

I would add, particularly today and particularly with this debate, in the spirit of co-operation and given our time limitations, that members could hold their remarks within a framework of approximately 10 minutes to give as many members as possible an opportunity to participate in the debate.

I am reminded that copies of the amendments will be ready in approximately five minutes.

Motions For Papers

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The House in committee of the whole will now proceed to the consideration of Bill C-28, an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act, the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act and the Salaries Act, Mr. Kilger in the chair.

Parliament Of Canada Act

[The Deputy Speaker]

The Chair has reviewed the amendment to the amendment tabled by the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough and it is in order.

I wish at this moment to make a brief statement on the manner in which proceedings will be conducted tomorrow during consideration of Bill C-28 in committee of the whole pursuant to special order adopted on Monday, June 4.

To ensure that proceedings will be conducted in an orderly fashion, the Chair wishes to clarify some of the provisions dealing with debate and the putting of questions in committee.

The first point concerns the procedure by which hon. members may propose an amendment in keeping with the order in question.

The order has nothing to say about the way this is to be applied, but I encourage hon. members to submit their amendments to either Journals Branch staff or to the clerk at the table, here in the House, at the very latest, by the end of Statements by Members, at 2.15 p.m., on Wednesday afternoon.

This will allow enough time to check whether the motions in amendment are in order, to put them in the correct order and, something that will be of great use during the deliberations, to get copies made and distributed to members of the committee of the whole.

It would therefore be greatly appreciated if notice could be provided as soon as possible, given the work which must be completed to ensure an orderly debate.

At the end of the committee's consideration of the bill the Chair will put the question on all motions proposed, as well as those duly tabled and circulated to members. Amendments not yet proposed or tabled, according to the usual practice in committee, will not be put to the committee.

Proceedings on this portion of debate will come to a conclusion no later than 15 minutes prior to the ordinary time of adjournment.

When the Chair puts all questions necessary to dispose of committee stage at 6.15 p.m., a division may be requested on each of the questions, that is on the adoption of each clause and each amendment thereto. The committee will report the bill back to the House and a non-debatable motion to concur in report stage will be proposed.

I trust that all hon. members have a clear understanding of how the deliberations will proceed tomorrow, and I thank them for the opportunity to make this brief statement.

It being 5.19 p.m., pursuant to order made on Monday, June 4, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of second reading stage of the bill now before the House.

The question is on the amendment to the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment to the amendment?

[Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to address Bill C-28 today. I want to compliment my friend from Portage—Lisgar for his excellent speech and the excellent points he made respecting the bill.

I have to say that I am just as frustrated as he is with Bill C-28. The reason I am frustrated is that while there are some good things in it, very obviously the government has attempted to politicize this issue. I am in politics and I understand the temptation to do that, but why do we have to do that on everything?

This was an opportunity for the government to use the independent panel to establish remuneration for members of parliament and in doing that really set a precedent whereby MPs could vote for the recommendations or vote against them based upon what the independent third party had done. Instead the government felt it had to meddle in this, to politicize the whole process and poison it in doing so. I will get back to that in a moment.

Let me talk about some of the things that are in the bill. First of all the Canadian Alliance has taken a number of positions on and has policy with respect to MP remuneration. We have said in article 70 of our principles that we believe MP remuneration should be set by an independent third party. Substantially that is what we have with this commission. We have no problem with that.

Second, we have said that the remuneration should come into effect after the next election, for obvious reasons. If the public is dissatisfied with this issue, with the package that has been proposed, it can be an election issue. MPs will not be in the position where they directly implement a pay increase that affects them, because of course their fate as members of parliament will not be known until after the next election. We believe in that very strongly. The government had the opportunity to put that in the legislation and did not do so.

Second, we have said that we believe in converting the tax free expense allowance into salary that is taxable. The commission recommended that and it is in the bill. We agree with that.

We believe, and we have said in the past, that the accrual rate for the MP pension should be reduced and brought in line with the private sector. To a substantial degree, but not completely, the commission did that when it recommended an accrual rate of 2.5%. For reasons that are not clear to me, the government moved it up to 3%.

The House leader from the government side is here and he says it did not do that. He is technically correct. What the government said was that it should produce the same result as the previous pension plan. We had a 4% accrual rate on a much lower salary. Now we have a much higher salary and at the same time the government is recommending goosing the accrual rate so that we end up with higher pensions. That is about an 18% increase for the typical MP over what it would normally be. The government should not have done that. That poisons the whole thing.

The next point is that we believe this should be fully vetted in the House of Commons according to the regular procedure for any other bill. We are pushing this through. I know that there will be arguments made that this was agreed to, but I still want to argue that this should have been put off until the fall. We could have had a regular debate and even have had witnesses. That would have removed the appearance that we are pushing this through simply because we want to avoid the political heat. I am grateful for the chance to speak on this, but now that we are pushing this through we do not have that excuse any more. We cannot say that we did allow people to come and comment on this and bring forward their testimony. The result is that people will rightly say that we pushed it through. I think that is one of the problems.

The last point I want to make with respect to a stand that our party has taken in the past is that we believe very strongly that the government has poisoned the process by putting the opt out clause in the legislation. What it is attempting to do is suggest to the public that if we have concerns about the legislation and want to vote against it, then we should be duty bound to opt out. That is wrong. That is reprehensible. My friend said it correctly a minute ago: equal pay for equal work. This is a blatant attempt to unduly politicize this thing.

The problem is that the public is already confused by this. It is complicated. This confuses the issue even more. It is a blatant attempt to politicize this whole process. We should reject it. A pox on the government's house for suggesting it. It is clearly political manipulation, both of the public and of MPs who have concerns about the legislation.

My concerns do not end there, but those are some of the things we have raised in the past. I wanted to address them today to explain how some of the recommendations meet concerns that we have had and how other recommendations are completely at odds with our position.

There are other things I want to mention. I want to mention the retroactivity. I disagree with that. That was not a recommendation. I do not understand why we have the retroactivity. I do not understand why we have the extra salaries for chairs of committees and for vice-chairs, of which I am one, when we do not have parliamentary reform to go along with it.

My friend, our former House leader, brought forward a whole suite of changes that the Canadian Alliance would have liked to have seen introduced last February. They were sensible changes. They were changes aimed at democratizing this place, changes that would introduce democracy really for the first time in this place in a way that would do justice to this place, which is supposed to be the home of democracy in Canada.

Instead of that, we got some pretty lukewarm changes which the government introduced just the other day. We appreciate those changes, but they really hardly go anywhere near where we need to go so that people have confidence that this place is concerned about really allowing MPs to represent their constituents. We have not gone anywhere near far enough.

Until we have members of parliament from the opposition allowed to be elected to serve as chairs of different committees, apart from the couple that are already allowed, I do not think we can support that. I cannot support vice-chairs getting extra wages. I think it is wrong. I do not think we should not be doing it. It is not part of the recommendations. It is not what Canadians want, I think, until this place is really reformed. I oppose that and I think my colleagues in the Alliance and other MPs oppose it. We speak against that.

I want to conclude by saying that this is always a difficult issue. I do not enjoy being in a position where I have to vote on my own wages. MPs are fundamentally in a conflict of interest position. It is impossible for us to disentangle our personal interests from public policy. I am grateful that because of the recommendations this will be, I hope, the last time we have to deal with this for a long, long time, perhaps ever. I hope that is the case.

I strongly condemn the government for meddling in this process. We had the chance to bring down a set of recommendations from an independent third party that really would have given the appearance that this was an arm's length set of recommendations. That has been sullied now by the actions of the government.

Just so I am clear, I want my constituents to know and I want Canadians to know that I will support Canadian Alliance amendments to substantially alter this legislation. If they do not pass, I will vote against this legislation. Like many of my colleagues, I believe that Alliance MPs should be paid as much as other MPs because we believe that we do the same amount of work and we should receive the same pay, so we will opt for that as well.