What about the ordinary citizens? Now everybody may pay into this plan but a low income person might not pay very much. I represent the inner city in Regina and people in the inner city in Regina cannot afford to put much into RRSPs. If we had the Reform Party plan, which would be a private open ended plan subsidized by the taxpayer through RRSPs and tax breaks, we would see wealthy people earning an awful lot more money. The gap between the rich and the poor would widen as we privatized the Canada pension plan. That is exactly what would happen.
That is the whole philosophy of the Reform Party. That is why in the House of Commons on Thursday Reform's official critic for revenue agreed that Conrad Black paid too much tax, that wealthy people in this country pay too much tax. That is the whole philosophy of the Reform Party. I oppose that and our party opposes that. Thank goodness the majority of the Canadian people oppose going off in that direction. It is the law of the jungle. That right wing extreme conservatism has done this country an awful lot of harm over the years and now the Reform Party wants to carry it even further by totally privatizing the Canada pension plan. I say we have to fight against that and we have to make sure that the Reform Party gets nowhere near the levers of power in Canada.
The Reform Party is very much against government programs that help ordinary people, but it is certainly in favour of spending billions and billions of dollars to subsidize the wealthy. Reformers are calling for a super RRSP plan where billions of dollars will be spent to subsidize the rich as they fatten their bankbooks with a very healthy pension plan. We have to fight against that. That is one reason I am concerned that this plan is moving in that direction.