The member from Kingston certainly holds his little, little green book up. I thought with all of his experience I could do it as well.
This lack of democracy, this lack of listening to people, is probably the biggest concern I have. Let us look at the pension plan without mixing it up with salaries and other things. Its clause by clause study was done in 12 minutes.
Look at the committee hearings where so much is done. We invite selected guests and give them one day to tell us what we want to hear. They would not even tell us what the government wanted to hear. So there are no amendments of substance and if there are they are defeated by the powers that be, by the Madam Speaker dictatorship that rules this House.
We now have a two-tier system being proposed, a trough lite and a trough regular. The trough regular gives us figures that are unimaginable. We have members who would get $4 million if they were to retire and live to age 75. They could never get that in the private sector. The pension plan is three and one-half times greater than one could get in the private sector.
The public is not saying that members do not deserve a pension. They are saying we should make it the same as we could get in the private sector. They are not saying-