Mr. Speaker, do I have to provide my own hecklers? I know there are not many people on the other side.
The rules of the House do not permit me to name the individuals who will be the top troughers in the new scheme as it is being developed. However, I can read the names of their ridings and the total sums to which each of them will be entitled, and I use the word entitled very loosely.
If the hon. member for Sherbrooke lives to the age of 75, he will receive $4.25 million courtesy of the taxpayer. The hon. member for Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte will receive $3.86 million. The hon. member for Hamilton East will receive $2.8 million. The hon. member for York South-Weston will receive $2.75 million. The list goes on and on.
No other class of Canadians has a deal like that; no corporate employee, no self-employed person, no farmer. Who on earth aside from our new aristocracy could ever hope to take home a paycheque like that?
One of the major sources of my case work is disabled veterans, pensioners in this, the 50th anniversary of the end of the war. I am dealing with one constituent now who participated in poison gas experiments at the Suffield, Alberta base. He is now paying the price of that in ruined health. He has a lot of problems. His doctor says there is no question that can be traced to the poison gas experiments. He and his wife draw the magnificent sum of $102 a month for his partial disability-shame, shame, shame.
Hon. members opposite say that for their little bits of service here they are entitled to millions of dollars at the expense of the Canadian taxpayer. I am disgusted to the point of regurgitation.
Surely people who pretend they are competent to run a country should be competent to arrange for their own retirement. They make a reasonable salary, as do we. Some of that could be invested to their own benefit. They do not have to take $4 from the public purse for every $1 they put in.
Reformers have put our money where our mouth is, so to speak. We are opting out of this plan. It will cost the hon. member for Beaver River, a school teacher and by no means a wealthy woman, $1.8 million which she would have received if she had agreed to stay in the trough with the hogs.
I opted out of the pension plan the day I signed up with pay and services. I gave a written statement to the effect that I did not want and would not accept it because I felt the old plan was unconscionable. The new plan, the new i
Why are we here? Did we come here to benefit ourselves? I used to live in the Philippines. I remember a famous remark by one of the senators there when he was tweaked for having his hand a little too deep in the cookie jar. He said what are we in power for if not to enrich ourselves. He must have been a Liberal.
Old line politicians maintain perks are necessary to attract good members. What it has attracted is a bunch of professional politicians, people who have systematically over the last 30 years bankrupt the country and now are expecting a massive payout for their services-some reward.
I hope when the bill goes to the other place there will be some sober second thought, although I do not expect it. Some sober second thought could even have helped here; it could have been killed in committee. Committee was not even allowed to handle it properly. It was whisked through committee with indecent haste. No one had a chance to make serious amendments or to work on it at the time. We will make some amendments in the House, to what purpose I do not know. We know what will happen here, the cabinet has decided. The whip will be lashed and everything will happen according to plan and all the Liberals will go home happy and fat with their suitcases full of money.