Mr. Speaker, I will certainly do my best to respect the time constraints. I must first excoriate the government for again moving closure on an issue like this one. This is the 51st time it has done this since it has been in power, exceeding the record of the previous Mulroney government. It is something the Liberals railed against the Tories for in the past. Now they are doing the same thing.
Obviously the bill is hugely complex. Not only does it chart new ground on the pension field, but in my judgment it charts new ground when it comes to issues of same sex benefits. I think the government is doing this in a sneaky way. If it wants to have a serious debate about it, it should bring it forward naked as it were in legislation so we can have a discussion and invite the public's involvement. Instead it has made it part of a bill and hides behind the skirts of the courts whenever it can. In doing that it abdicates its responsibility as a legislator.
I will say one brief word on this point. I mentioned to my friend from Wentworth—Burlington that according to the Canadian Law Dictionary conjugal rights are the rights of married persons which include the intimacies of domestic relations. The Concise Oxford Dictionary states that conjugate means to unite sexually.
The question in this legislation is how are they to determine whether people are uniting sexually. Will they have sex inspectors going into the bedrooms of the nation, something the leader of the party across the way promised we should never do?
It is a good question and I do not see anybody on the government side answering it. They have talked all around it. The member for Mississauga West blew a lot of smoke when he was up but never did get to the point on that issue. The government has some answering to do on this issue and I appreciate the member for Wentworth—Burlington having the courage to take this on head-on. We appreciate that.
There are many issues here. The issue I want to talk to first and foremost is the fact that the government is breaching a principle.
When it struck a deal with the Canadian public on the Canada pension plan many years ago, it promised that we would never see premiums rise above 5%. They are now at almost 10% and almost certainly going to go beyond that at some point in the future. That was a promise it made and ultimately broke.
We saw the same thing happen with Employment Insurance. We saw a fund being set up ostensibly to provide benefits to the employees who subscribe to that plan. They pay in all kinds of contributions and expect that they will get the contributions back. If they do not and a surplus is run up, they will get the surplus back. What does this government do? It raids that $26 billion fund.
We see that same theme happening yet again with this bill, the public service pension fund. A $30 billion surplus has accumulated and it says “The means justify the end. We will go ahead and strip this fund of that surplus because in our judgment we can use it for something better than what that money would go toward if it were left in there”. I think that is reprehensible.
Is there no pool of money that is beyond the reach of the government? Should we not establish a principle that there are some pools of money, especially ones that are jointly funded with the public, that the government cannot get its grubby hands on and that belong to the people who kicked it in, in the first place? Should that not be some kind of a principle, or does the government feel that it can have access to every cent the public has ever put into a plan? What is next? Will it be RRSPs?
I am alarmed that the government would do this and then cut off debate by moving closure for the 51st time and basically ensuring that the NDP, the Reform Party and the rest of us who strongly oppose this and other people who have strong interests in it do not have a voice on this issue. The government should be ashamed of this, but we see it over and over again. I guess I cannot appeal to its pride on this issue.
It has simply taken the point of view that it does not care what the public thinks any more. It is going to push ahead with this and do what it will. It should be absolutely ashamed. People on this side of the House want to see an honest and open debate. Sadly we will not get it from that gang over there.