Mr. Speaker, I listened with great sympathy to the first part of the member's remarks about the miner he described and the unfairness of that particular case. My response to him on that, while I have great sympathy for that situation, is that quite simply two wrongs do not make a right. Because there has been one unfairness, I think it is important that wherever we can we try to avoid creating further unfairness.
On retroactivity in this case, if we went back to all the former members of this House who are now out in the workplace, we would find some who have returned to the public service. They could be former bureaucrats who have gone back into the bureaucracy; they could be people on appointments; they could be people on contracts; and so on. Some of those people may have moved from western Canada to Ottawa and made complicated family and financial commitments. Therefore, to undo their financial base at this time would be truly unfair. By the way, it would also be a great complication if we were to think of complicated legislation.
As to his question about my profession and the matter of dealing in dry subjects, I was a professor, but not of dry subjects. My field of research was ice, and I worked in the area of hydrology, so the work I did was really quite wet. My research was on ice and I worked on sea ice and lakes in all parts of the north. For example, I worked on the effect of ice on fish. However, I moved away from that type of work to skating on thin ice in this House. I would also say to the hon. member that my remuneration has changed considerably, and considerably for the worse.
Having said all of that, I do not apologize for trying to explain legislation as well as I can to members of this House and to the people of Canada. We all have difficulty reading bills and reading the acts that govern this country. I understand why they have to be written very carefully and in very precise legal language, because of precedents and the way the courts will have to interpret them and so on. I would say to the hon. member in all sincerity that I think one of our duties is to try to explain legislation to the best of our ability, whatever our abilities are, to the people of Canada. That is what I was trying to do in the area of double dipping.
As all members know, we cannot control the future through written legislation. However, as far as is humanly possible this legislation with respect to double dipping is written to try to prevent people from getting around it, which unfortunately all sorts of people appear to do with our legislation.
I do not apologize for trying to explain legislation to the people of Canada to the limits of my ability.