Mr. Speaker, in the last 24 hours I have learned much about why many politicians can talk so much and say so little. I have learned much about why many politicians say so little in failing in their attempt to be all things to all people.
I have also learned why many politicians prefer to say nothing at all, for if a politician says nothing there are no words that can be used against him or her to deflect from the substance of debate.
Yesterday in the House, instead of answering a reasonable question from my Reform colleague from Kootenay East, the President of the Treasury Board decided that the only response required was to refer to comments I made in the House on May 4.
Suddenly the debate is no longer about pensions but about the comments of a member of the House who raised the compensation issue. The issue was raised in my capacity as an individual and not as a matter of Reform Party policy and was so qualified. The issue was raised by other members of the House from other parties during the course of the debate. It was an issue that all speakers recognize was separate from the main issue of debate, that being the pension of parliamentarians.
This is all quite regrettable. It is important to at least reference the issue of our basic compensation since the studies dealing with our pensions do not address them in isolation but rather in the context of the other moneys and benefits we receive.
The issue of our compensation was raised by the President of the Treasury Board when he introduced legislation and stated that they could not wait for the day when we could deal with salary increases as suggested in the Sobeco, Ernst and Young study. They could not afford them then. While the total compensation approach outlined in the study is worthy of further discussion it is not functionally possible at this time, as reported in Hansard of May 4.
The position of the President of the Treasury Board is entirely consistent with Reform Party policy. The Liberals campaigned
in 1993 on a general promise of changes to the MP pension plan without specifics being provided.
We campaigned in 1993 with specifics provided on how we would change MP pension. As well we provided specifics on why the compensation of MPs must continue to be frozen. We said explicitly that until a balanced budget was achieved the salaries and expenses of government MPs and their offices would be frozen. Our position has not changed.
I was not the only member raising compensation issues in the House during the course of debate on pensions. The Liberal member for Wellington-Grey-Dufferin-Simcoe was quite explicit. In Hansard of May 4 he stated:
We cannot give ourselves a raise when we are telling everyone else to hold the line.
Referring to the Ernst Young report he stated:
However the report recommended an increase in pay for members of Parliament. I would be more than happy, if that happened, to see the pensions done away with and work within an RRSP program.
This was a Liberal member speaking and another Reform suggestion. Another Liberal copies Reform award might be due to the hon. member. He expressed sentiments not unlike those expressed by Reform members for many years. I agree with him as I agree with the President of the Treasury Board that the issue of MPs salaries is a matter to be addressed at some later time. In this respect we have all perhaps clouded the issue of the merits or demerits of the current pension plan proposals by raising salary issues at the same time.
To the extent that I have clouded issues by raising such issues I must express regret. However, I believe it regrettable the President of the Treasury Board would use my comments to avoid addressing issues of substance in the pension debate, one of the most important debates in the current Parliament.
To paraphrase a recent hit by the reunited "Eagles", a band with which the hon. Liberal House leader is certainly familiar if not the President of the Treasury Board, I respectfully ask the President of the Treasury Board to get over it, to quit playing his petty partisan politics, to get on with the debate of MP pensions, and to let us get on to the substance of the issues with respect to our pension plan.
The Liberals think they have us. They think we will not talk about it any more because of what I suggested in debate in the House over a week ago. We will not run away from the issue. We will address it.
For the Liberals who are present and listening to the debate, the Canadian public is totally fed up with self-serving MPs giving themselves a fat cat, gold plated, three tier trough regular for the old folks, the old veterans; trough light for the class of 1988 and onward and the ones from 1993; and trough stout for cabinet ministers who can contribute anything they want down the road. A pension plan like that for life is ridiculous.
Why will the President of the Treasury Board not introduce some ideas about a matching contribution plan, a one for one? For every dollar wonderful deserving MPs put into a pension plan the government matches by a dollar. Why does the government not do that? It cannot do that because it has to be better. The Liberals think they are a better class of citizen now they are elected, that they deserve three and a half times, and that they deserved a six to one plan before that.
There is no question the President of the Treasury Board is touting a proposal on the basis of sophistry just like the Minister of Finance, using clever but misleading arguments to lead to a false and wrong conclusion. The Canadian public is fed up with the lack of courage the Liberal government is showing and the lack of integrity when it promised integrity in the red book. How does it show integrity for the Liberals to talk about a proposal of another member and call it a salary increase when all we are talking about is looking at the pension plan which is too generous.
The number one objective of my Reform colleagues in the House and I is to kill the Cadillac pension plan. The government is not interested in it. The Liberals think they deserve more. They think they desperately have to save Sheila, the Deputy Prime Minister, so that she could get if she were to leave next month $2.7 million. They have to protect Mr. Boudria, the man who worked-