Mr. Speaker, I am deeply troubled as I rise today to speak to the issue of MP pensions. My opposition to the pension plan and that of my colleagues is well known and our refusal to accept it is well known.
What especially troubles me today is the way the government is using time allocation to ram this and other bills through the House without proper debate. This is an abuse of our parliamentary system.
In speaking to the pension scheme, as I often do when I am speaking on bills in the House, I always refer back to the auditor general's observations about what government spending should be about. There should always be accountability. There should always be a designated goal and a measurement for whether those goals are being achieved by the expenditure. What is the purpose of this pension plan? What is it meant to do? Is it achieving that?
When the American government was instituted some two centuries ago there was actually a spirited public debate as to whether legislators should be paid at all. Some said they had to be because otherwise only the wealthy could engage in politics. Others said they should not because politics should not attract people who thought they could make a comfortable living if they were good at it.
The decision that they should be paid seems obvious, but back then politics was not a full time occupation. Legislatures sat less often for less time and they did a whole lot less legislating. Maybe that is something we could enjoy as Canadians. By the way, back in 1867 Canadian MPs were paid $6 a day. Things are a little different today. Now we have professional politicians. That is the consequence of the decision to pay them well.
That has both good and bad aspects. On the bad side, too many people in the House have never had real jobs. I do not say that political expertise is always bad. We do need people who understand how to get things done and how to work within the parliamentary system. I suppose it is good that some people can do politics full time as a career, but we can have too much of a good thing.
In any case, the decision was made to pay politicians so that financial barriers to holding public office would not exist. That is defensible, and it produced predictable results. MPs are also paid fairly well today. We are not paid as well as some people may think, although as my colleague from Calgary Centre recently pointed out, we are paid more than is apparent. We are paid reasonably so that we can afford to devote ourselves full time to the job and, to be quite honest, so we will be harder to corrupt. Frankly, that is money well spent. MPs who are struggling to survive and to keep the wolf away from the door are obviously more susceptible to improper approaches. So we have good reason for paying politicians and for paying them reasonably well.
What about the pension scheme? What is the reason for having this pension plan in the first place, and why is it so generous? It is obvious that the purpose of the pension is to enable people to stay with a career, knowing that when it is over they will be provided for. Private sector companies have pensions for that reason, and it is quite reasonable.
No one doubts the desirability of having pensions for MPs, as my colleague just pointed out. The real question before us today is do we have a good reason for having an outrageously generous pension system for MPs compared to their salaries and compared to the private sector and compared to other Canadians? Put another way, is there a good reason for structuring the rewards for politics so that MPs get less now and more later, that is, if they survive six years or longer? Is there a good reason for
creating a system where the reward for being an MP depends very heavily on getting re-elected again and again? Do we have a system that rewards MPs for making the right choice here and now, or one that encourages them to promise and promise to deficit spend, to go along with their leadership even when they know it is wrong, all in the desperate hope of being re-elected and becoming a 20-year man or woman and walking off with a huge pension? That is what the pension plan is doing right now.
Mr. Speaker, the other day you found it necessary to remind my colleagues on the opposite bench that this is a debating chamber and not a barnyard. The problem that time was chicken sounds from the other side, but it is also inappropriate to hear snorts and grunts.
I do not expect my colleagues opposite to agree that we are, all things considered, overpaid. Perhaps they will agree that the current system is dishonest because it conceals the real compensation MPs receive. Perhaps they will also agree that it is poorly designed, in that instead of rewarding courage and sound decisions in the present it rewards survival at any cost.
I think my colleagues opposite would be wise to go home and speak to their constituents before they make decisions on how they will vote on the pension bill, decisions that may haunt them in the next election. I also think they would be wise to take some time during the recess, if we wait to pass the bill, and before the recess if we do not, to consider the following questions.
If we are going to reward MPs at a certain level, does it make sense to put the money primarily into salaries or primarily into pensions? If we are going to reward MPs at a certain level, does it make sense to pay all of them more or less equally or to give far greater rewards to those who have been here the longest?
I want to repeat that I thoroughly understand the importance of having expertise available. I am no career politician, and I understand that this is not, in proper numbers, a bad thing. However, I also believe that a system that rewards survival in politics above all else will attract to politics precisely those people most adept at surviving election after election. Too often these are also people skilled at sacrificing the future to the present in their public policy decisions. Our national debt has essentially accumulated in the last 20 years.
Last night the member for Durham said: "I have often wondered coming to the House how it is possible that Canada created the debt it has today. I have often wondered who was controlling the cheque books.". Perhaps he should ask the Prime Minister, a consummate political survivor, a former finance minister, and a master of promise now and pay later. Such politicians have proven very skilful at convincing Canadians they can have their cake and eat it too, which has been ruinous for the country. It has been very lucrative for them, however.
Our national debt has accumulated under politicians who made promises and presented bills later and were re-elected for doing so. Our national debt has accumulated under politicians with very generous pensions. I am afraid our national debt is so huge that the only people who can shoulder the burden in the future will be MPs on their pensions. Frankly, I do not believe the hon. member for York Centre will wind up in a cardboard box collecting pogey if we reform MP pensions. I do believe the current system rewards wrong behaviour, which is very bad and ill considered.
Let us by all means adopt an honest system of paying MPs. And whatever we decide to pay them, let us put most of it into salaries, with a pension system no more generous than the private sector. Let us not reward the political survivor above the one who does what is right, who tells the truth, and who sometimes must pay the price for doing so.
Proposed changes to the MP pension plan are totally inappropriate. The members opposite imposed closure. They have heard countless complaints about the generosity of the plan. They have excluded witnesses critical of the pension plan from committee hearings, but they cannot exclude the Canadian public.
I look forward to going to all of their ridings in the next election to remind their constituents of how they behaved today. Because of their votes today, they are going to need their pensions after the next election, because I am convinced they are not going to be here.