Maybe we should. The hon. member suggests that there should be an election. I challenge him to call an election on this issue. It is an excellent idea.
They even boasted in the speech from the throne that pension reform was a plank in their platform. They have made a mockery of their own promises.
Bill C-85 was not at all what the Canadian taxpayers expected. Instead of real pension reform, the Liberal caucus agreed to protect senior MPs and youthful cabinet ministers, because it knows that when the Reform Party forms the next government, and it will, contrary to what my friend in the Bloc suggested, the Liberals will not be getting any patronage jobs to supplement their incomes.
They claim to have eliminated double dipping. However, even if they were to get a federal job, their pension benefits would keep on growing, thanks to inflation indexing.
I am amazed that with only two years left before the government has to face the Canadian electorate it would have the gall to introduce a bill that would give MPs a pension other Canadians can only dream of, especially since it is the average Canadian taxpayer who will have to pay for this now silver plated pension plan.
How much will they have to pay? They will have to pay plenty. For every dollar contributed by all those Liberals and Bloc MPs who are rushing to opt into the plan, the taxpayer contributes $3.50. It is hard to believe that the government is not embarrassed to boast about a reduction of 1 per cent in the accrual rate, from 5 per cent to 4 per cent. Wonderful, but it is still double what it is in the private sector.
Where else but in Parliament could one receive a pension for only six years of service and that pension would be indexed for life and payable starting at age 55? This is early retirement by anyone's standards.
In the private sector, only 22 per cent of the pension plans are adjusted automatically for inflation. It takes MPs only 19 years to qualify for a full pension. A person in the private sector would have to work for 35 years to be eligible for anything similar.
The Prime Minister attempts to justify this premium pension plan by saying that MPs have a difficult time readjusting to private life and finding jobs in the outside world. Surely to goodness they cannot have that much difficulty. If they do have that much difficulty, I fail to see how it could be the taxpayer's fault.
Often when we ask the Prime Minister to justify his continued support for this cash for life scheme he compares MP pensions to hockey players' salaries. For one thing, we are talking about salaries, as opposed to pension plans; let us get that straight. For another thing, I believe the Liberals are skating on very thin ice on this one, because in Winnipeg we saw what happened when the players demanded too much. The players and those who hired them parted company. On the next election day the Canadian taxpayers will be telling the players in the government they would just as soon part company with them.
The provincial legislators in Prince Edward Island and in Alberta realized that the taxpayers could not afford to support them forever and have scrapped their pension plans. In Manitoba, Premier Filmon promised to cancel the pension plan and replace it with a registered retirement savings plan arrangement.
We are not suggesting that members of Parliament should not be properly paid for the job we do. We all know that we work hard here at this job and that we are eligible and we deserve a decent salary for it. But let us separate salary from pensions. The Reform Party does not say that members of Parliament are not deserving of some sort of retirement benefit as well. Let us have a retirement benefit that we can take in good conscience and we can look our constituents in the eye and say yes, I contributed and yes, you contributed; it was equal and it was dollar for dollar and we do not have the feeling that we are taking advantage of the people who pay our salary and put us here in the first place.
Canadians are being asked by their government to do with less. In the vast majority of cases Canadians can accept that. They can accept that there is not enough money to fund all the government programs that have been created over the last 30 years. They cannot accept the excuses offered by this government to continue to fund a pension plan that Canada cannot afford. The government has to get its own financial house in order before asking Canadians to support them for life.
During the 1993 election campaign I promised the constituents of Wetaskiwin that I would not participate in the existing gold-plated pension plan. As a matter of fact, one of the first things we did when we got to Ottawa was to go over to pay and benefits and sign a declaration there saying that we were paying into this pension plan only under duress and that we had no intention whatsoever of collecting.
This is not something we came up with in the last few hours so that we could debate it in the House. It is something we signed at an early date because we in good conscience did not want to participate in a pension plan of this type.
On February 24 and during our annual general meeting, when I explained to my constituents how meagre the changes in this bill were, I told them there was only one acceptable clause in it, and that was the one that would allow me to remain outside of the pension plan.
I question the intention of the government. Perhaps I am treading on thin ground here, but I think there was some malice in that very clause. It was aimed directly at the Reform Party. The idea of course would be that some would opt out and some would not and it would effectively split our caucus. I can say that
this has not happened and that our caucus has decided individually and collectively that we will opt out of the program.
Members have probably deduced by now that I am opting out of this plan with its silver lining. I recommend that anybody in the House who plans to be here for more than one term follow suit and do the same.