Mr. Speaker, it sounds like we are back on a budget debate here.
With respect to the ethics counsellor it interesting when we point out that the Liberals failed to keep their promise in the red book. They promised that the ethics counsellor would answer to Parliament. The fact is he does not and it is to a registrar or directly to the Prime Minister. The Liberals say the best ethics counsellor is the Prime Minister and that he really is who the ethics counsellor is. That is our point. We do not have an ethics counsellor and the Liberal government promised one.
On the business of the Liberal caucus members who now claim to have not allowed the process to work, the member claims they agreed that maybe the process could work. The point is that a lot of people are saying the gun control bill will not reduce crime. Registration will not reduce crime. We already have a registration system in Canada. It has proven that it works better than the old system. Whatever level of crime we have it will not change based on registration. Criminals will not register their guns. A lot of people are saying that. That voice is not being heard by the Minister of Justice.
In terms of credibility, let us take the member's intervention here. How credible is it for a member to rise and say that one of our members, the immigration critic, took a trip to Washington at taxpayers' expense? That member himself knows there is no way that a member of Parliament, outside of cabinet, gets reimbursed for travel outside this country. It is only for travel within Canada that we get reimbursed.
If the hon. member has facts, I leave it up to him. He made an allegation. I would like to have him prove that our immigration critic went to Washington at taxpayers' expense, because that is the impression he is giving. Travel outside this country is not reimbursed. He knows that and I know that. That is an allegation not based on facts. It is just that type of partisan political comment that I think hurts the House and the reputation of politicians.
Then the hon. member went on to attack my own credibility. He charged me with back pedalling on a suggestion I made in the House. In terms of MP compensation and restructuring MP compensation which everyone in the House agrees with me privately that we should be undertaking he said that during debate last week I suggested that an MP's salary should be $144,000. I said that and I am not back pedalling on that. It is out of line for that to be defended by me outside the House. I said that in the House and I will still say in the House that we have to restructure MP salaries.
What this whole debate is about is not the amount of remuneration. It is integrity I am talking about. It is about honesty and the lack of the will of the government to address the very issue of MP pensions. It shows the lack of integrity of the government, the rookies, the veterans and everyone in the House who supports this MP pension plan. It smacks of trying to promote something by using the argument that our salaries are frozen so let us overcompensate here; we are undercompensated here, so let us overpay there.
The member who asked me the question has an accounting background. Now that I have everyone's attention by saying $144,000 in the House, and which went outside the House, let me say what MPs really get.
Those people who have been here for six years or more get $64,400. They get $27,000 tax free. If the bill goes through, they will get three and a half times what they are contributing to their pension now; $25,000 accrues to their account. That is their benefit, their asset. They get it when they turn 55 years. That represents $114,000. In the private sector no one gets $27,000 tax free. Gross that up and they are already getting $140,000.
My point is if someone wants to talk about integrity and have an open and intelligent discussion on MPs compensation, let us have it. If someone wants to talk integrity and have an open discussion on MP pension plans and why they can justify this obscene amount of money on a fat cat Cadillac pension plan, three tier, trough regular, trough light, trough stout, then let us have that discussion. However, to take these cheap shots smacks exactly of what I am accusing the majority of the members of the House, because the majority are Liberals. They are the government. They lack integrity and they should restore it.