Mr. Speaker, I will be speaking for 10 minutes if the Chair allows.
It gives me great pleasure to speak here today on the MP pension plan. Before I begin I would like to make a remark.
For reasons that elude us on this side, I cannot in my wildest dreams imagine that when we are speaking here how when the simple information and constructive solutions we are putting forth cross the line in this House it gets so distorted so that the responses from the other side come back being unintelligible.
In any event, we in this party are not saying that we do not want pensions. All we are saying is that we would like to bring them into line with the rest of the public. Of all the things the public finds distasteful and unfair about this government, this House and these members, it has to be the gold-plated MP pension plan we have.
In fact, the recent commission that was sent to study MP pension plans, when comparing them to other countries said that our plans were the least stringent in terms of commencement and one of the highest in terms of allowance.
Let us take a look at some other first world countries and make some comparisons between our pension plans and theirs. In France and the United Kingdom the minimum age of service is 55 years, not six years like we have. Australia, 12 years of service or age 60. The United States of America age 62. The maximum allowance in our country is 75 per cent of our terminal salary which is just near the top of all the countries I have discussed. We have about the best that one can possibly imagine.
How lucrative is this plan in real terms? Let us look at the last election. An MP serving eight years who left office at the age of 37 will receive $28,350 a year initially and $87,000 a year at age 60 for a total buyout of $2.7 million.
An MP serving 13 years who retired at age 50 will receive $39,700 a year initially for a total buyout of $1.9 million. His initial payments will increase with the indexing. Therefore the last payment will be $64,692 a year. Not bad. Nowhere will members find that in the private sector. Nowhere in the private sector does such a lucrative plan exist. In fact in the last election 73 eligible defeated MPs will collectively receive over $100 million in buyouts at the expense of the Canadian taxpayer.