Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary said that the CPP premiums are not a tax but a contribution to a public pension plan. Let us just look for a moment or two at a private pension plan, the MP pension plan, the most obscene in the country.
Canadians are now paying twice as much of their salary for a paltry $9,000 a year in CPP. Thanks to the government, parliamentary porkers like the member for Sherbrooke and the Deputy Prime Minister are going to pocket five to six times that amount. That is scandalous.
How can the Prime Minister justify asking Canadians to pay 70 per cent more of their meagre pensions when he and his Liberal colleagues are just going to lap up the lavish MP pension plan?