moved that Bill C-47, an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act, the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act and the Salaries Act, be read the second time and referred to committee of the whole.
Mr. Speaker, before I begin my comments I would like to ask the Chair to notify me after 10 minutes of speaking because I want to share my time with colleagues on all sides of the House.
I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-47, an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act, which I had the honour of introducing earlier. The bill responds to recommendations of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs which was tabled on Wednesday, June 3 in response to the Blais commission report on MPs compensation.
As the commission so aptly put it:
An MP is someone who serves the public, and therefore must not expect their pay to be a windfall. In fact, no one expects that. By the same token, no one should be forced to experience financial hardship after winning an election.
This means that compensation and benefits must be reasonable, realistic given what is expected from MPs in practical terms, and in line with general trends in society—or at least not lag too far behind. However, we are seriously lagging in this respect.
I would like to commend the chair of the committee, the hon. member for Peterborough, and the members of that committee for their report. The report is a reasonable response to a complex and even more sensitive issue. Interestingly, it seems like everyone in the media finds this issue to be more important than many other areas of government policy.