Mr. Speaker, I am surprised the hon. member opposite just figured out that a lot of people will soon be turning 50. Surely we have been around long enough for this to have been obvious some time ago, to provide for our pensions, and to get this plan on track before now.
In 1994, just after I was elected, I asked a question in the House of the Minister of Human Resources Development about how secure the plan was since we were having to dip into the contingency fund. The minister essentially patted me on the head and said “Don't worry. Be happy. Everything is under control. No problem. Don't raise any alarms here. Everything is fine”.
All of a sudden the government figures out that people will be turning 50 and may want their pensions pretty soon. I am outraged that we are in a crisis situation we should have known was coming. Now the government is trashing any proposal to try to fix this situation in a sensible way.
Let us talk for a minute about the disability portion of the plan. The disability payments under the plan amount to only 17 percent of the payout of the plan. It is a small portion of the plan. It is not like there will be a huge amount of money to make up to ensure people have disability coverage.
I can make a couple of points. The CPP for some odd reason takes over the disability obligation of private disability insurance plans. A person cannot be doubly indemnified. After a fairly brief period of time the CPP kicks in. It takes precedence over the private plans. Many Canadians have disability insurance but the CPP gratuitously and unnecessarily takes that over. Even the amount the plan pays out in disability is not necessary in many cases.
If as Canadians build up their own capital account, their own pension plans, they unfortunately become disabled they would have the money to start drawing on. The protection would be there. If people become disabled they would have to make use of his benefits earlier than anticipated.
There is every reason to think there could be measures put into place to protect people against disability. We all know we could become disabled. There are no guarantees for any of us. We want to protect and we will protect.
It is nonsense to throw that red herring out and say that Reform's proposals are no good because somehow they will not handle disabled protection the same way as the Liberal's proposals will. There are plenty of good ways to do it. I urge the hon. member to get on with looking at some of them.