Madam Speaker, I listened with interest and I want to address at least one point the member has raised.
He continues to suggest in the House that the expense allowance members of Parliament receive should be doubled and added to salary. This is absolutely a wrong approach. The member is slowly back pedalling. He has said in the House on many occasions that all the benefits should go away and members of Parliament should be paid $150,000 a year. He justifies that by saying that the expenses somehow should be doubled to be on a pretax basis and added to salary.
In fact what the member has failed to realize is that if expenses were added to salary it would be the same as telling a travelling salesman who received a $5,000 reimbursement for his housing, travel, and lodging that somehow he should get $10,000 added to salary instead of being reimbursed for the expenses.
Members of Parliament do have legitimate expenses: a second housing allowance, travel, food, et cetera, all of which are part of doing this job. They are reimbursement of expenses.
Perhaps the member would like to calculate what the equivalent pretax would be. What he has failed to do is understand that all the expenses incurred by members of Parliament would be deductible for tax purposes against that salary. In fact the amount of $150,000 represents a 30 per cent salary increase to members of Parliament as proposed by the Reform Party.
I simply ask the hon. member for Calgary Centre if he would explain to the House why he believes we should change our pension plan to make it the same as the private sector's and why is the Reform Party recommending a 30 per cent salary increase to members of Parliament?