Madam Speaker, the motion before the House today reads as follows:
That this House urge the government to replace the current Members of Parliament Retirement Allowance plan with a pension plan that reflects the current norms for private sector pensions, with a maximum contribution in accordance with the Income Tax Act.
Its wording is extremely vague, when it refers to current norms for private sector pensions. Which private sector pensions? Are we talking about the pension plan for executives at General Motors or Chrysler Canada, or about the pension plans of employees of small businesses in East Montreal? The standards are not at all the same. The wording of the motion is definitely unsatisfactory, and if the wording is unsatisfactory, we can assume that the substance is as well and that the motion leaves much to be desired, as it will in the course of this debate, especially in terms of what is said by the motion's sponsors.
We in the Official Opposition feel that the pension plan for members of Parliament cannot be dissociated from the issue of members' salaries or the entire budget envelope that is allocated to members.
If members were paid $200,000 annually, as they are in the United States, it would be obvious that a pension plan if any, should be very modest in scale. However, when a member's salary is quite low, as may be the case today, it makes sense to have a more substantial pension plan. The two go together. We cannot separate these issues like the compartments they have in submarines to keep them from sinking.
I think it is just petty politics to take an issue that is already controversial and say: "Look at those people in the House of Commons. They are overpaid, they have too many benefits and privileges, they have a shoe shine service, they have people to cut their hair-" and other people to split hairs. I think we have to take a far more comprehensive view, and that is the approach we support.
We can afford to be very detached about this issue, Madam Speaker, especially considering the role of the Official Opposition in this House and its life expectancy, in the light of its political views. So we have a certain perspective that others may not have, in the circumstances. Of course, members should be treated in a way that is commensurate with their responsibilities. To claim, which is petty politics in my book, that members of Parliament are overpaid and make such a pronouncement out of the blue, based on nothing, further erodes the role of MPs in our society.
There was no shortage of occasions in the past for demeaning the role of parliamentarians, a role which is often not obvious. Very few care about the number of hours MPs dedicate to their work, seven days a week. You know, Madam Speaker, 75, 80 and 90-hour weeks are not uncommon for MPs, but who is counting? So, the entire system, both the pay plan and retirement plan, should be reviewed.
We must also be able to attract quality candidates for the position of member of Parliament. My colleague from Glengarry-Prescott-Russell referred to the 1830, 1832 legislation which was in fact designed to allow any citizen, from the richest to the ones from the humblest origins, to have a chance of becoming a parliamentarian. It is not with this kind of abrupt rollback of benefits that we are going to be able to set the course and stay on course, one which is increasingly difficult to maintain.
One has to realize that, normally, MPs are elected to the House of Commons at the peak, so to speak, of their working life, when they are the most productive, building a career, whatever their line of work is. So, at the end of their mandate or mandates in the House, MPs very often find themselves in a vulnerable situation, especially since, as we know, the turnover rate among members of the House of Commons of Canada is one of the highest in Western Parliaments.
Unlike in the United States, where members of Congress serve some 20 years on average, Canadian members of Parliament serve between five and seven years on average, which is an extremely short time. We know what happens to members after they retire or fail to get re-elected, how difficult it is for them to find new jobs, for all kinds of reasons I will not get into at this time. But this is a reality members from all political parties must face. That is why we must make it a little easier for members
who retire of their own free will or who are forced to retire because voters have decided it is time for them to do so.
Because of their precarious position, members of Parliament must be given sufficient financial resources to get back on their feet after retirement or electoral defeat. There is however one thing on which the Official Opposition has always been clear, that is, when a member of the House of Commons has the right to collect a pension from the Government of Canada. We do not find it normal for a person who is barely 30 but who has completed two mandates to be able to collect a pension from the Canadian government immediately.
In our opinion, we should discuss the age at which former members of the House of Commons should be able to collect this pension, by comparing apples with apples. Let us look at how things are done at the RCMP and in the Canadian Forces. This could help us in trying to determine the age at which former members of the House of Commons should be able to collect their pensions.
Of course, we are also opposed to double dipping, that is, getting two cheques from the Canadian government. We think that this practice should be abolished. For someone who is already receiving a pension or an allowance because of their past services to the Canadian government to be allowed to continue to collect these cheques while sitting in the House of Commons is not normal either, in our opinion.
We do not intend to compromise on the age at which one may collect a pension or on what is commonly called double dipping.
To consider the issue of pensions, we must look at reality. Many members of this House or of previous Parliaments had a job in which they contributed to a pension fund in the company where they worked. When they came to the House of Commons, they contributed to its pension plan and stopped contributing to their other plan. Often, a member who leaves this House finds that he has contributed for a very short time to a private pension plan, so he will have to continue working for quite a while. He will be penalized because the pension fund is not transferable. We should look into this issue.
I do not think that we can solve these problems with an opposition motion. We will have to wait for a government bill to frame the issue so that we can really debate it.
We now have a five-line motion. I think that a fleshed-out bill should have quite a few more provisions and that a non-partisan review should lead to the government presenting a bill, as the Prime Minister said a few days ago.
Finally, we said that we could consider the government bill very calmly, but surely not in the heat of a debate that stirs passionate feelings against members of Parliament, in which people are led to believe that MPs are literally sucking the teat of state. The whole benefit package of members of the House of Commons, particularly their pension plan, must be the subject of a government bill that is considered as neutrally and objectively as possible, certainly not in the heat of passion and especially not one from people who told us at the beginning of the session that they would cut back their salary, or at least part of it, that they would give back 10 per cent of it and then said that they had made a mistake. "I have unemployed people at home and I cannot afford to set aside 10 per cent." Such an issue so easily inflames public opinion that perhaps we should avoid doing it.
For the reasons which I mentioned, the Official Opposition will vote against the motion before us today.