Mr. Speaker, it is hard to speak over the howls coming from the would-be preachers down to the left.
Let us talk about double dipping. The champion double dipper sits on the Reform side. Does any Reform Party member stand up to denounce it? Does any Reform Party member stand up and say: "No, this is wrong. We will not do it because there is only one taxpayer's pocket"? They do not.
He served in the provincial legislature and gets a $60,000 a year pension and he sits in the House and collects a member of Parliament's salary. Surely even Reform Party members can understand the hypocrisy of their position.
The fact is we had a red book and we made promises in the red book. Have we lived up to those promises? My answer is yes. Not only did we live up to them, we have gone beyond them. We even had some grudging commendation on that from members of the Reform Party, including the Reform Party whip.
Let me say for myself and my colleagues in the House, and we have to say this often, Liberal members of Parliament do not believe that a member of Parliament should be paid $150,000 a year, unlike the suggestions by the Reform Party whip.
The hypocrisy goes beyond just the pension issue. It goes back to the early days of this House when members of the Reform Party stood up and said they wanted to do politics differently. Having watched the House before, they are not doing politics differently. They are taking politics to a new low. Talk about political opportunism. They would misrepresent the workings of this House for pure, selfish, political gain.