Thank you, Madam Beaudin.
I have to go back to this. From where do we draw our mandate? From where do we formulate the position we adopt? It comes from the same people.
It is an interesting question. Is it discrimination if everybody is treated the same? Everybody in our organization will eventually come to the same fate. They'll be asked to take their pension at the time that we all agreed it would be done.
The pension doesn't exist in isolation, obviously. I try to make the connection between it and the collective agreement. It forms an integral part of the entire agreement that we have and our whole system of seniority and the rights and privileges that stem therefrom. So it's tremendously important to our organization.
You're quite right that not everybody has the same rights and benefits that we do. In fact, I can't think of anybody in Canada, certainly in our profession, who does. But that goes back to my comments on the broadness of this proposed legislation, that it is too broad, because not all situations are the same.
Mr. Komarnicki made reference to the fact that things are very rarely black and white. I would entirely agree with that, and I would say that the truth and the proper position for a parliament to take lies in some shade of grey.
So I caution the committee not to contemplate this bill in its current form, as it will have unintended consequences.