Mr. Speaker, of course I was not impugning motives or anything. I am trying to direct my conversation through you. As I said, I know you, even from your previous occupation, as being one of those fair people that I want to chat with.
I will return to the issue of broken promises. Issues of integrity have arisen since the last election campaign. Promises made by the government have not been fulfilled. I must bring up the issue of MP pensions. We were promised in the last campaign that the MP pension plan would have a major overhaul. On this side of the House we put it down in black and white. We were going to scrap the MP pension plan. When we ran in 1993 there was no way it was a fair pension plan.
We got a slightly revised MP pension plan from the government. People qualify only after six years. They start to draw at the age of 55. It is fully indexed. At the same time people on pensions and OAS have been told to stay tuned. In three or four years their pensions will not be what they are today. Pensioners will start to lose their pensions in three or four years. The government campaigned on no problems. However, it will start to cut back on seniors' pensions while it guarantees itself a lavish MP pension plan the likes of which no one else in Canada could possibly qualify for. I feel like an old timer.
During the last campaign our budget balancing proposals included an idea for pensions. We said that the old age supplement should be targeted toward those most in need. What is most in need? We decided the cut off on OAS would be the national average family household income, $53,000. We said if someone makes more than that then they do not need help from the federal government on OAS. We are not talking about CPP which people contribute to, but about the non-contributory plans.
From the reaction of the Liberal I campaigned against one would have thought we had commissioned a study to spread-eagle people on anthills and pour honey on them. We had done a terrible thing, but what are the Liberals' proposals now? The cut off for the OAS is $53,000. It is exactly what the Reform Party campaigned on in black and white. We were up front and honest, telling it like it is.
Members over there said: "That Reform Party, what a slash and burn bunch it is". Yet when they got in what did they find? They found the Reform Party's proposals were pretty doggone good. They used our dollar figure for their own cut off, which is remarkable.
Imitation is the ultimate flattery. In that sense I am flattered. However, I would rather feel flattered about being up front. I would rather be imitated on the honesty and integrity of my party than I would on a particular issue, although it is nice to be proven right once again.
The government has a case of selective memory when it comes to fulfilling its promises. It is a case of: "When I was on the opposition side I chastised that Mulroney character. I called him every name in the book. I did whatever it took to be a rat packer and throw the dirt on him, but when I got over here my memory became selective. My promises became slurred and garbled. My vision became Ottawa depth perception instead of looking at the whole country", which is too bad.
This behaviour lends some credibility to the views of people who were surveyed in the Globe and Mail recently. They said that they
held politicians in the lowest regard of almost any occupation in Canada. It is because of broken promises and lack of integrity.
I am reminded of a story in which three people were arguing over which of three occupations had been around the longest: doctor, lawyer or politician. I think it is a true story. The first guy was a doctor who said: "Our occupation has been around the longest. The Bible tells about how in the beginning God took a rib out of Adam and made a woman. Therefore the doctoring skill has been around since the beginning of time". The lawyer jumped in and said: "Hold it. It says even earlier in the Bible that in the beginning it was all chaos, and God had to put the laws of nature in place. That is a lawyering skill, so lawyers have been around forever". The politician, who was Liberal, jumped in and asked: "Where do you think the chaos came from?"