Mr. Speaker, it is true that that member invoked a huge pay increase for MPs, so I am not going to say that he asked that the salaries be reduced. But others who spoke not long before he took the floor tonight referred to the fact that we were overpaid.
There are a couple of further points to consider in all of this. One, allegations are made about our so-called golden pension and so on. I know it is not easy to defend one's salary, one's paycheque. It is a lot easier to say no.
I remember those days in the Ontario legislature, where I sat in a previous incarnation. The odd three or four MPs would vote against a pay increase and none of them of course would ever refuse to take the increase once it had been given, in spite of voting against it. We are seeing the same kind of thing going on here.
The bill that we have before us is to reduce MPs' pensions. Whether or not that is a good idea is a matter that is open for debate, but we were elected on a specific program to reduce it. It is a commitment we made. What we are delivering on tonight is in excess of the commitment we made. We were elected on that. Fair game. I could have disagreed or agreed with the individual parts of the red book, but I was elected on the red book and I will vote for that.
At the same time, it does not mean that any of us in this House should cater to the likes of David Somerville of the National Citizens' Coalition, who raises money by printing in the newspaper little pigs saying that little pigs represent MPs and that to cut off their salaries would be a good thing and that if Canadians want those benefits for MPs cut off all they have to do is send their money to David Somerville in a little box, which happens to be at the bottom of the same newspaper ad all the time.
What does he do with that money? I am sure he sticks it in his own pocket. Who is he accountable to? He has an outfit called the National Citizens' Coalition. It is not national. It is not a citizens' coalition. It is nothing of the sort. It is a business. It is run by him and for him for his own benefit. He does not disclose how many members he has. He never discloses any of the names of any members. And he makes no disclosure of the salary he gets from generating these contributions from Canadians. That is not an honest way of doing business.
People know how much I make. People know how much the member across the way makes. And he does not pretend, issuing a press release, that people should send him money so that he can blast David Somerville in Toronto. He would not do that. Neither would I. But he gets away with that, and a few of us cater to that kind of nonsense. It is not right, and it is about time some of us said it.
On the issue of the pension itself as it is today, it is going to be reduced with this bill. I am 45 years old. I have worked in the government all my life. I worked for 14 years as an employee of the federal government. Because I had only nine and a half years of contributions to the pension plan-in the beginning. I was a sessional employee-I had no pension. I had to withdraw my contributions. I was given 2 per cent interest on the money I had invested there. Are they the kinds of funds I would have had in an RRSP? Surely not.
Then I served under another golden pension plan as a member of the legislature. I served there for nearly four years. Interest rates in the 1980s were in the area of 18 per cent.