Madam Speaker, perhaps the minister of Human Resources Development expects that, inspired by what he said earlier, we will want to maintain April 1 as the implementation date of the act. We will support this amendment. Considering the delays which occurred, as usual, our position being a reasonable one we will support this amendment.
However, I would like to take the time at my disposal to reply to the hon. member of the Reform Party who criticized earlier our proposal to maintain the two appeal or revision tribunals, that is one for the old age pension plan and the other one for the Canada pension plan. As hon. members know, these two plans are very different. They are not financed with the same funds since the Canada pension plan is paid for by workers who contribute to its fund while the old age pension is financed by all taxpayers.
As we know, the government's intention is perhaps to merge the two plans in some way as announced in the budget speech. We believe however that having only one board is far from being the best solution. I believe this has nothing to do with the costs linked to the board as my hon. colleague said earlier. The fact is those two boards will have to deal with cases that are very different.
Some witnesses before the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development explained to us how difficult it was for handicapped persons to be heard by the board. Unfortunately, the model that was chosen and the merger will not be based basically on the old age pension appeal board but on that of the Canada pension plan.
We believe that their merging is not a good idea. We do not think it will lead to savings. Quite the contrary, we think that in the interests of seniors who will have to deal with a board that handicapped persons were not satisfied with, and in the interests of the handicapped who have a right to a better process than what is currently available to them, it would be better to maintain two boards and to improve the existing Canada pension plan appeals board.