Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak on Bill C-208, An Act to amend the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act.
As noted earlier, this bill comes at an awkward time. It would have been so much easier to have reviewed this subject immediately after the Conservative leadership race, during the summer, a summer when the then Conservative Leader, the hon. member for Vancouver Centre, British Columbia, crisscrossed the country from Halifax to Vancouver to Newfoundland on a pre-election campaign. It would have been easy to recall the House to give the members of the 34th Parliament the chance to debate fully the question of whether the provisions of a bill can apply retroactively.
It is not in our parliamentary tradition to introduce bills which apply retroactively and, when we do so, it is often only grudgingly, after having examined all of the ins and outs of the matter.
The current members of the 35th Parliament were elected in accordance with the rules that prevailed at the time and, clearly, they have some vested rights. It is obvious on reading Bill C-208 that it affects the vested rights of members elected to serve in the 35th Parliament.
If I understand correctly, Bill C-208 would apply only to members elected to sit in the next or 36th Parliament. This is similar to the decision reached by the Quebec National Assembly when it reviewed the members' pension plan.
Therefore, instead of conducting a pre-election campaign at the height of the summer, I think the party to which the hon. member for Saint John, New Brunswick, belongs should have been calling on its leadership, if there was any, to convene Parliament so that the issue could be debated and pension plan reform proposals could be applied to the current Parliament.
Bill C-208 is brief. It contains one provision with which I know most hon. colleagues will certainly agree, that is the provision which states that a former member who is receiving remuneration in whatever capacity from the federal government cannot at the same time collect a pension. Let us take, for example, the case of a former member who is appointed to a federal court bench. Personally, I feel it is wrong and somewhat contrary to common sense when a person can collect both a pension and a salary from the federal government. I feel the same way about persons working for various federal offices and government or parapublic agencies and collecting a pension at the same time.
In my view, the different levels of government in Canada should get together and agree to ban this practice from one province to another. For instance, there is something a little odd about a provincial deputy minister of justice receiving severance pay just because he is appointed to a federal court of appeal. Representatives of the various levels of government in Canada should sit down together to review the administration of public moneys in this area.
As for the second major provision of Bill C-208, namely the age restriction criteria whereby a former member cannot begin to collect a pension immediately unless that member has reached 55 or 60 years of age, this is indeed another matter.
Many will say that a member has no business collecting a pension of $40,000 or so a year after just two terms of office, that is to say eight, nine or ten years depending on the constitutional limits, if he or she was a member of Cabinet and is making a career change. There is something wrong with that picture, however, and I think we should look at it.
Studies have demonstrated that, by the time some members who sat for two terms, having been elected twice, finish collecting the full pension to which they are entitled for life, they will have cost between $2.5 and $3.5 million to the public purse.
However, the bill introduced by the hon. member for Saint John, New Brunswick, has a flaw as I see it. There is a gap between the proposal for a minimum age of eligibility, whether 55 or 60 years old, as suggested in the hon. member's bill, and
the present situation where one can collect a pension immediately upon retiring.
Many members-with the kind of turnover we have here in the House of Commons, there were 200 new members elected in this 35th Parliament- find themselves in a difficult situation. Many of those members who were defeated in the last election-this is true of any election, but particularly of the last one because of the major changes that took place about six months ago, on October 25, 1993-may be finding themselves in dire straights. Perhaps, in fact very likely, we would need a sort of severance pay to help former members find a new job.
Members of Parliament who held professional positions have to quit or at least considerably neglect their careers to serve their constituents while they are sitting in the House of Commons. When they resume their careers after being defeated or upon retirement, they must rebuild their clientele.
Farmers who had leased their farms will also have to get reacquainted with new technology and take operations back in their own hands. This bill lacks transitory provisions, and there should be such provisions.
Members of Parliament who retire or are defeated often have to regain, pardon the expression, some sort of "political virginity". A member who used to work in communications, in a radio or TV station, would not be allowed to go back on air overnight as a political analyst. The station would say that he or she is too closely associated with a given political party, and should stand back for a while and come back a few months or even years down the road. In the meantime, the former member will be handed assignments in areas not closely related to the political arena that he or she knows well. The same thing happens in several other fields. You are told: "Distance yourself from politics; work on your image and, soon, we will take you back".
That is the time frame this bill does not cover, and that is why I find it very hard to say: Let us immediately stop paying benefits or annuities to members who retire or are defeated in an election; let us stop paying upon retirement and wait until former members reach the age of 55 or 60, without at the same time putting transitory provisions in place. I would have liked Bill C-208 to contain something specific in terms of transitory provisions.
We would do well to use Quebec's legislation, the legislation passed by the Quebec National Assembly, as a model to refine this bill in that regard. This government had indicated in its parliamentary calendar that this issue would be debated in the House and I would recommend that the various points I have made be taken into consideration when a government bill on the subject is tabled.