What does this do? It is another MP pension plan that contravenes the Income Tax Act and is completely illegal.
This new plan decreases the contribution rate from MPs from 11 per cent to 9 per cent. What does that do? It increases the pay that MPs take home. This plan is at least two times as lucrative as private sector plans and continues to contravene the Income Tax Act in at least two cases. Therefore that makes it completely and utterly illegal.
We in the Reform Party, as all members, have been given the chance by the government to opt out. What happened? To a person, the members of my party have opted out of this plan. When many of us, myself included, were given the sheets to sign for our pension plan when we came here in January 1994, we wrote on the top that we would not sign out of protest because we would not be a part of this plan.
It was an election promise we made and one that we keep. It is not only we who will opt out of this plan. There are a handful of hearty souls from the government side who, under duress and intense pressure from their own people, have decided to hold strong and represent the wishes of their constituents and opt out.
Are the members of the Bloc Quebecois, a group that is committed to destroying the country and tearing it apart, to be members of this plan? Absolutely. I find it completely hypocritical that these members are rushing to be members of a pension plan in a country they are running away from. Why does this group want to join a pension plan from a country that it wants to tear apart? It is hypocrisy. Its members should look in their souls and in the mirror when they decide to do this.
In this party, we propose not to be destructive but to be constructive. We have said all along that we want to be a part of the community, to join hands with the rest of the country to make it strong. One of the things that we can do is have the same pension plan as the people who voted for us.
We want to have the same pension plan as the private sector and in essence, lead by example. Therefore, we should collect
the MP pension plan at age 60 and decrease the contributions by the taxpayer. As one of my friends from my party just said, we should make it a one to one contribution. Above all else, let the MP control and manage his or her pension plan. It is interesting to reflect on this for a moment because it shows the the difference in mind set and philosophy that we in the Reform Party have to the government.
Government members believe they should get their lecherous tentacles into all aspects of people's lives from business to MP pensions. We in this party and the majority of Canadians believe that it is not the government members who should do the majority of things in the country, but people, individuals and private organizations are the ones who can best deal with the problems that affect them. Let government do what government does best and what the private sector cannot do and let the people and individuals do everything else. Our job is to empower the people to do that.
One of my colleagues was musing the other day about the so-called increase in pay. What he was really doing is trying to find ways of decreasing the cost to the taxpayer. He proposed abolishing the MP pension plan, abolishing the allowance but increasing the salary to compensate for this. He qualified this by saying that this does not in any way, shape or form represent the will or the wishes of this party.
Nobody in this party wants to increase the salaries of any one of us. The hon. member for Beaver River started off when she was a lone person in the House by voluntarily decreasing her salary by 10 per cent. She was the only individual in the House to do this. It is important to understand that out of the 295 members only one MP at that time did that. That MP was from the Reform Party of Canada.
Other things we have done that members of the other parties have not done is that we took the bull by the horns and tried to find out other constructive ways of saving the taxpayer money. We saved money on our flights by flying economy. We in my office managed to save the taxpayers at least $10,000 to $12,000 per year by flying economy and on cheap flights. If all of us were to do that we would save the taxpayers at least $3 million a year. We should look at that because it is certainly something constructive that we could do.
Many of our constituents have complained about this MP pension plan. Many of these people are individuals who fought in the last war, which we celebrated this week, and who have worked all of their lives only to have pensions of less than $1,000 a month. Furthermore, on that amount of money they are remorselessly taxed by the Canadian government. It is not something I would lay at this government's feet right now as it is something that has gone on for a long time.
I ask the government to look with compassion on those individuals who have made such a significant contribution to the backbone of the country. They have worked all their lives to make it the safe place that it is today.
I implore the government to lead by example. Give the people the confidence they need in their elected officials. As we saw in World War II, we came together to do great things, to defeat the fascism of Nazi Germany. That hope is not lost on us now. In 1995 we can all come together to build Canada, the greatest country in the world, to once again stand on its feet and be the middle power that it can be. We can only do that by coming together, leading by example and working together for the benefit and future of our wonderful country.