I said at the beginning of my remarks that I had been a federal civil servant. I know I have said this before but I will repeat it now. I started here as a busboy in the parliamentary restaurant. The other day I looked at my paycheque when I first started. It was $86 for two weeks. That was on October 25, 1966.
I work hard for my constituents and I think we should be working hard. There is nothing wrong with our doing that. I am not complaining about it. I am glad that I work hard. I am glad I have the health and so on to do that which is required of me to properly serve my constituents. At the same time we should stop pretending that MPs are overpaid and underworked, do not do anything and so on.
If the only thing wrong with that would be that we criticize each other, I suppose it would be secondary. However we are diminishing the whole institution by keeping this up. Of the G-7 nations, Canada is either sixth or seventh in terms of the compensation it offers to its legislators at the national level. It is not the highest. We are not pigs at the trough. What kind of nonsense is that?