Madam Speaker, I would like to make four short points about the bill under consideration this morning.
The first point is that this is something the public cares very deeply about. I think we are all aware of that; all members who have spoken today on this topic have mentioned it. Because this is something the public cares about, it is something we should seriously consider.
In my experience nothing gets the public more riled than this whole subject of the members pension plan. This is for a couple of reasons.
One is because there is nobody else in the country who is able to command a pension for life after working only six years. Canadians feel it is fundamentally unfair that anyone should be able to do that. Another is that the pension plan is a very rich one, even if you discount the fact it can be earned after only six years. It is fully indexed and is based on 75 per cent of the best six consecutive years of earning. Again it is not something which is available to most Canadians.
Therefore it is fair to say it is something we should legitimately deal with because the public is demanding it be dealt with.
The second point I would like to make is that change is very much needed in this pension plan. Canadian taxpayers are not able to fire us, to put it bluntly. If they lose confidence in us, if they feel we are not competent in the job we are doing and our performance is unsatisfactory, the taxpayers are not able to relieve us of our duties as can happen in private industry and in any other walk of life.
It adds insult to injury in their view when not only can they not get rid of us in between elections but even after an election if our performance has been unsatisfactory they have to pay us forever under a pension plan as long as we had been MPs for six years.
Canadians do feel that change is needed simply on the basis of equity. On the basis of the dollar figure Canadians feel that change is needed. As other members who have spoken have said, for each dollar an MP pays into the pension plan or did in 1993, the taxpayer contributed more than $6. That is a very high ratio of contributions of the person receiving the pension and the employer, who in this case is the public or the taxpayer.
In other words MPs pay about 20 per cent of the value of the plan. This compares to 40 per cent for federal public servants and about 35 per cent for public sector executives. Once again the percentage of contributions in the eyes of Canadians is inequitable.
Other members have also mentioned that of the MPs from the 1988-93 Parliament 134 will receive pensions now. Those will cost $5.5 million each and every year. That is an increase of 56 per cent over what was paid out in pensions to former MPs in the last fiscal year.
Again Canadians see this pension liability as one which is growing very rapidly. In a time when our tax resources are shrinking and the demands on them are increasingly competitive, Canadians are concerned even though it is a minuscule amount in terms of the overall budget. The percentage of growth and the growth of the liability does concern a lot of Canadians.
The average pension for those 134 MPs from the last Parliament is $41,450 per year and that will go up as the indexation goes up. This is true even though a number of those 134 former members of Parliament are not retired. They are working and some of them are even working for the federal government. Canadians do not see any equity in paying pensions to people who are quite able bodied and working and are able to support themselves. They are asking why pensions are paid to people who are working and are well able to work.
The last point I would like to make about the fact that change is needed is that a lot of our pension obligations are unfunded.
I have been contacted, as I am sure other members have, by members of the Public Service Alliance. They are concerned that there is an unfunded pension liability of about $100 billion for federal civil servants. They are concerned that this fund should be managed, should be funded, should be actuarially sound. They are concerned about their future pensions.
When Canadians are concerned about their future, their pensions, their retirement years, it is very difficult for them to feel positive about a group who again seem to be free or not subject to those kinds of uncertainties.
The third point I would like to touch on is what this bill proposes. It proposes essentially two things. One is that double dipping would end. In other words people who are entitled to members pensions but who are working for the federal government or crown corporations would not be entitled to pension moneys as long as they are employed by the federal government or by crown corporations. The second thing it would do would be to end any pension payments until at least age 60.
I think it is fair to say that those are key elements of pension reform for members of Parliament that the Canadian public is asking for, but I very much agree with other members who have spoken on both sides of the House suggesting the bill does not go far enough, that this just touches on the need for pension reform but there are other elements that really need to be brought into a comprehensive reform of members' pensions.
While this is a good start and the two points are valid, there are other elements that need to be addressed.