And democratically elected he was. Let us ask him to carry on in his democratically elected position sitting in the Parliament of Canada.
I talked about correcting certain irritants. The only irritant is with the Canadian public, who are paying the bills for this pension plan. I suspect this will not correct any irritant for them.
We have been trying to do some research during the last couple of days since this bill was brought in last Friday and introduced to the House for debate today. As I look at the figures, the numbers simply do not add up.
I am going to mention this opt-out clause now and then I will mention it several times again. I am going to keep mentioning it across this country every chance I get to speak. There is an opportunity for the class of '88 and anyone who was elected after them, such as myself and my colleagues, to opt out or not to opt in. We will look at some of the optics of that later. My friend from St. Boniface, for instance, and all the rest of them who were elected in 1988 have the option to opt out. I will be referring to that later and issuing some challenges to them.
Bill C-85, an act to amend the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act and to provide for the continuation of a certain provision for a pension for members of Parliament, is being debated. It certainly has been a long time coming. It was a promise in the red book, and I am pleased to see that the government is doing something about it. The Liberals are fulfilling their promise for age 55 and no double dipping allowed, but they do not go far enough to correct the irritant of the people who are paying for this pension plan. Of course that is the taxpayer.
I suspect there has been quite a battle in the government caucus about when they would bring this in. It was made clear to me by Treasury Board within the last couple of weeks when the minister's press secretary assured my office that we would have an opt-out clause for me, Deborah Grey, Beaver River, because I was obviously so concerned about this.
It looks as though they have gone perhaps one step further on that and allowed the whole class of '88 to opt out. I applaud that, and I will have my pen out to write down all those colleagues of mine who are going to opt out.
We have called for pension plan changes for a long time. The minister, in his remarks earlier, said that we had an opportunity to discuss this plan in the House of Commons earlier, as if that were some kind of noble gesture from the minister. In fact that was on November 22, when I, the member for Beaver River, introduced the motion on our opposition day to talk about the MP pension plan. So it was hardly some great initiative on the government side.
In fact I would love to quote reams out of Hansard of that day. People stood in their places, a lot of them from the class of '88 because that was the day after their trough day, when they qualified for the pension and their benefits had become vested. They stood in their places and said: We do not make all that much money''. Compared to the private sector, no. Sobeco Ernst & Young proved that in their report.We have families and we have homes''. Of course we do, and we have to take that into consideration.
It goes on: "I just bought a house and I have a mortgage, so I need a pension; I had to lose my job from before; I sacrificed a lot for public life". On and on the tirades went. Yet when I look at the things they had to say and when I look at how the Canadian public viewed that debate that day and then I stand and hear something like this today, it makes me pretty sad. It makes me pretty mad also, because this is unjustifiable. This plan is indefensible and we simply are not able to condone it.
We called for changes that would move the retirement age to regular retirement age, age 60 perhaps. It is not that we are against a pension. We have never made that assertion. We have never made the comment across the country that we are against pension plans for members of Parliament. It is not in our blue sheet of Reform policies anywhere. One would not find that Reform MPs are saying we do not want any pension. What we are saying is that we want a fair pension, brought more in line with the private sector, moved to regular retirement age. Let us make sure that we are not getting some sort of special treatment.
I talked yesterday on the lobbyists act about two-tier systems for lobbyists. I talked about the two-tier health system that exists in this country for Canadians from coast to coast as well as for regular public servants on the Hill compared to MPs on the Hill. There are two tiers on a lot of things.
I do not think that anyone in this House today can justify that we think we deserve a two-tier pension system. It simply will not fly in the public. I go around and speak to various people and I am sure government members do too. They hear from the same Canadians I do. They travel around and hear from people and take heat on this.
I suspect that is one reason why the Treasury Board assistant said to me the other day and again today that the minister is trying to get this through by the summer recess so that it is all done, tucked away, and hopefully everyone will just forget about it and keep quiet.
The last government hoped that a lot of people would forget about a lot of things and keep quiet also. It simply does not happen. They did not forget about it. And we will never forget what happened to them in the last election. Perhaps it is a sign of things to come.
We want a fair pension plan. But we are calling for a pension plan similar to that of any other person in the country who buys into a private pension plan. That is, the employer will contribute one dollar and the employee will contribute one dollar, dollar for dollar. When I was with the Alberta Teachers Association I put in x number of dollars a month, and the ATA put in x dollars a month to match it.
We have seen the numbers. They range from $6 or $7 to $1, and now we are being told by Treasury Board that it is down to $3.60 to $1. Whatever it is, it is still obscenely rich. There is not another person in the country, except this insular group sitting in the green chamber and the folks on the other side of course, who are going to be able to say: "I gave up my life for public service. This was my sacrifice to the country." Well, if it is going to be a sacrifice to the country to serve in this place, then let us make it a sacrifice, so that we are not spending some obscene pension and living on it for the rest of our lives, and we will not feel guilty about the dollars we collect that other people have paid.
I hear from both sides of the House today, from the government and the official opposition, that it is okay because we have made some incredible sacrifice. I do not consider this to be a sacrifice.
I miss being at home, and I can hardly stand to leave my husband every week, but when I think about the opportunity we have to serve in the Parliament of Canada, it is remarkable. Surely we cannot whine and cry and go home to St. Boniface, Halifax, or Sherbrooke or wherever and say: "This was my sacrifice for the country, so I am going to collect a heap of cash. Sorry about that, folks, but this is what I did for you and the country, now this is what you are going to do for me". It will not fly. It is indefensible and unacceptable. So why not a fair pension plan? I do not know.
It would seem to me that the provision for virtually full protection against inflation is totally unchanged. Surely that is something that could be brought in. We do not see that in the legislation.
Many people do not know that at age 60 the present plan will be indexed to inflation back to whenever it was the person stood for a pension. I qualify right now at age 42. I would get
everything back indexed for inflation at age 60. That also is indefensible. Members across can try to convince me and the people who are paying the bills that it is defensible. I do not think we would see that anywhere, that any constituents across the country who will be putting an X somewhere at the next election are going to say it is justified. It is simply not going to work.
As I have pointed out before, it is something rarely found in the private sector. We are not going to find private pension plans like this. The husband of one of our members is an expert on mutual funds and RRSPs. He works in the insurance business. He would never stand publicly and say the private sector has the same plan as MPs, fully indexed back to age 42. That will never be seen. We all know it, especially the people who are paying the bills.