If I had known I was going to fall into this situation, why would I have retired? I could have stayed in the RCMP and done a job working all day shifts. When I retired I was basically working shift work. I could have gone to a desk job or another RCMP job where I got paid the salary I was getting.
If I had known what I know today, what I would have done, in my own mind, is stay in the RCMP. I would have stayed there for 35 years, sat at a desk eight hours a day, had weekends off, had no overtime or call-outs in the middle of the night being confronted with people with guns and whatever other situations you can get into with stopping cars and all the rest of it. I could have relaxed. I could have gone into a position, worked a day-shift job, Monday to Friday 8:00 to 4:00, and gone home at the end of the day. I had 32 years; I could have done that for three or four years if I'd wanted to. Why not? Why would I go and give up the salary I was making to come to this? I don't know why I'd do that. I wouldn't do that; somebody else might. I have a value for money and what it can do for me. I don't know if anybody else has, but I do. When I get reductions like this and somebody's taking $719 out of my pocket because somebody else wrote laws and let them do it, I don't look upon that as being favourable to me, nor would anybody else in my situation.
You're asking me if I knew I was going to go to this. If I had thought I was going to be in the position I'm in today, I'd be making $85,000 a year today, basically doing very little for the RCMP compared to what I was doing, which was investigating crime and going from job to job trying to put out fires with very little manpower the way we were doing it. Why would I go to this, when I could have gone to an eight-hour-a-day job in the RCMP making $85,000 a year? To come and sit in front of a committee, to me, is like begging for money. I don't have to beg you people for money. This should be mine.