Mr. Speaker, my intervention will not be long but I have been carefully listening to the interventions from our NDP colleagues with respect to this proposed amendment. Unless I heard it incorrectly, from the very mouth of the last speaker comes the reason why the amendment should not be supported.
She is talking about giving, as I understood, the opportunity for the provinces to dip into this fund and use the money for what they think is right, if I understand the amendment correctly. Yet in the very next sentence she points out the irresponsible behaviour of a certain province during the regime of a certain government. There is nothing in the future to prevent other irresponsible governments in other provinces from doing things that might be irresponsible with the CPP.
It seems that what Canadians want is to make sure that the Canada pension plan is there when they retire and to make sure that when they retire they will receive an appropriate pension, being one of the three pillars we are trying to get Canadians to appreciate.
If we are going to do that we want to make sure that the fund is invested in the most prudent and most efficient way to ensure profitability, not for the sake of profitability but for the sake of ensuring that those people who are retired can count on the Canada pension plan. One of the ways we want to do that is to make sure that the investments are invested in a prudent, financially secure manner. If we are going to leave it willy-nilly to governments that may or may not be good or bad from time to time, it seems to me that in itself is irresponsible.
If that is the intent of the NDP amendment I certainly cannot support it.