Mr. Speaker, I maintain that the government is not listening. It is not listening on the young offenders, on crime control, on victims' rights. And it is not listening on pensions for the MPs.
We heard them, certainly in the dribble that was spewed out by the member for Winnipeg St. James. He talked about why politicians have such a low profile. He said that the people on this side are the ones that keep talking about it. That is not true. It is the people that are talking about it.
Ironically, a letter was delivered to me in the House just now from a constituent of mine. Parts of it might convey the message. It was sent as an open letter to the Prime Minister:
As one of your employers, I expect Canada to be managed by real leaders worthy of trust. In the 1993 election campaign you promised to restore integrity to government.
Where's the integrity in your MP pension reform, especially in light of your recent budget? You promised to reform pensions, then made only minor changes that don't come close to bringing MP pensions into line with pensions like mine. I have to save for my retirement and can't even depend on Canada Pension Plan any more, yet politicians get pensions that I pay for. Worse yet, many of your cabinet colleagues and long-sitting MPs manage to get away with no changes whatsoever to their original pensions.
I think that says an awful lot.
If we must expect less, shouldn't our leaders also expect less? You promised integrity, but we see business as usual. Patronage continues, spending is out of control, and promised reforms and action plans have only meant discussion papers or empty words.
That is from someone at that grassroots level and it explains why people do not trust politicians. Let us look at other reasons they do not trust politicians. We have all read the books On the Take and Beyond the Law . We read that stuff and we see what kinds of things have happened in this place.
In the Hill Times the chairman of the committee I am on, the member for Rosemont, although he is misquoted a little, says that the joint foreign affairs committee had an $800,000 budget. He said: ``Most committee chairs overestimate their budgets for the year. You do not know how much you need so you pad everything like mad''. That is what people are seeing. That is why people are asking questions and that is why politicians get a bad name.
We are talking about savings and pensions for people. One of the biggest problems Canada has is that its people have about 7 per cent savings to the GDP. Countries like Chile have 25 per cent. Many of the countries in the Orient have savings higher than that. That is what provides stability for a country. People see politicians not taking care of those kinds of things. We should be encouraging people to save through RRSPs to build that savings level, so that money is invested in Canadians.
The GST is a good example of what we are talking about now. A party decided the GST was good for people. You MPs that were here then should take that home-