Mr. Speaker, I apologize. It was within context. I hope you appreciate that.
The ad I was talking about says: "You could be there". I was not referring to you, Mr. Speaker. I was talking to the government side.
The point I am trying to make is here we have written the perfect plan paid for by the taxpayers of Canada, not by one's own resources: age 55, on the beach in Bermuda, lapping it up, a drink in your hand and everybody else is back home working.
That is a crying shame. One of the other things I was thinking about was in the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal on May 3. There is an article about the indebtedness of Atlantic Canada as if Atlantic Canada were a country.
It says the indebtedness of Atlantic Canada would be somewhere between Uganda and Nigeria, in the most severely indebted countries: "The ratio of net public debt to GDP ranges from 121.8 per cent in Newfoundland to 93.1 per cent in New Brunswick". Here we are in Atlantic Canada drowning in debt.
The federal government and the provincial governments have a responsibility to manage our resources for the benefit of all Canadians. Here we are lapping it up for ourselves at the same time as we are allowing the country to dig itself into a hole $550 billion deep with no sign whatsoever that the government can even get out of it.
It is making the hole even bigger and yet its members continue to say: "It is a sacrifice for us here in the Parliament of Canada. We need this gold plated pension plan". Everybody else has to struggle for their jobs, struggle for their paycheques, pay taxes through the nose so that we can, with a gold plated, freedom 55 pension plan, be on the beach in Bermuda courtesy of the Canadian taxpayer. I do not think that is good enough.
I have an article about Liberal broken promises which says the Liberals promised not to increase the tax burden of Canadians. That is in the red book. We find in the last budget taxes are going up 1.5 cents on a litre of gasoline. Corporate taxes are up. Surtaxes are up. Everything is up.
The poor taxpayer is finding we are grabbing more and more money out of his pocket while he is concerned about his job. He is concerned about his mortgage as interest rates go through the roof. He is concerned about the education of his kids. He is concerned about what his kids will do, whether they will get a decent job while we take more and more taxes out of his pocket so we can make this great sacrifice and go and sit on the beach in Bermuda with freedom 55.
The Liberals promised to base federal appointments solely on competence rather than patronage. We heard the President of the Treasury Board today tell us about how he would put an end to double dipping.
This bill would stop double dipping because Canadians are fed up to the teeth with our gold plated pension plan in one pocket and a government salary in another pocket and maybe two pension plans after that is all done in another pocket. We can get out there and enjoy life after the great sacrifice we make while they have to pay after they try to educate their kids and pay their mortgage.
When he defined double dipping he said if you get money out of the general revenue fund of the Government of Canada, that is double dipping and therefore your pension is going to be reduced dollar for dollar.
Patronage appointments are things like being appointed to the board of Air Canada or to other boards of crown corporations. I was reading On the Take about the days when to be appointed to the board of Air Canada was a coveted patronage position, because, next to the Senate, which had all of the privileges granted by this House, the Air Canada board allowed people free Air Canada passes wherever Air Canada flew.
Appointments have been made by the government to crown corporations and not a nickel of the payments made to those people come out of the general revenues of the Government of Canada. Therefore double dipping will continue under this proposed Bill C-85 just as much and just as unjustifiably as it was before. And they tell us they have reformed the system. Reformed? Not one bit.
It goes on and on. They tell Canadians that they are going to get this place organized, that they are going to ensure that they will make a great sacrifice and that this country will get back on some kind of economic sound footing. Unfortunately, the only people who will get themselves on a sound footing are the people who get themselves elected to this House to make that supreme sacrifice of getting the gold plated pension plan so that they can get their freedom 55 and sit on the beach in Bermuda and enjoy it all while the poor Canadians have to work to pay the taxes and the debt and look after the kids.