Mr. Speaker, the debate this afternoon has been conducted with appropriate the tone and in the appropriate manner. As I said earlier, this is a difficult thing. I wish it did not go with the territory. I wish we could have a process in which these kinds of decisions were removed from us. I do not agree with the government House leader that there would be something wrong with taking this out of our hands, but that is a legitimate point of view.
When I say it goes with the territory I am reminded of once being in a bookstore and looking through a collection of old newspaper stories somebody had put together on the occasion of the anniversary of something. When I was flipping through I noticed that in 1905 the headlines read “MPs give themselves—”. So we might take some comfort from the fact that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose and that this has always been a matter of some controversy, at least as far back as 93 years ago and probably before that.
I want to say something with respect to something the House leader of the official opposition said about the fact that there are so many different categories. I understand his concern but if the House leader of the official opposition were to get his way surely, and I do not speak against this in principle, there would be more categories. Unless all the people who are in the plan now in various stages were to be dealt with in an incredibly unfair way, the investment that they have made in the particular plans would somehow have to be recognized. We would then have another category.
Even if the Reform Party were to form the government and bring in its own plan, unless it was going to act in a way that it would otherwise condemn in every other aspect of human life it would have to take some account of the reality of individuals and their participation in the existing plans.
All I am saying is that there is no way to escape complexities. If an entirely new plan were brought in and you were to recognize, as you should in some way, the participation of people in the past and in the present in pre-existing plans, you would have to wait until everybody in all those other plans died off and then presumably you would only have one plan for everyone. That would take a long time.
I do not think we should be against complexity in principle. I think that where fairness demands complexity then complexity it is. Simplicity in itself is not a virtue when it comes to these kinds of things.