Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this bill.
As the hon. member for St. Albert has pointed out so rightly, the time we have had to bring to light the various issues in this bill before the Canadian people has been cut short again. It is a tragic abuse of this House. There are some very significant factors in this bill that need to be brought to the attention of Canadians. I will focus on a couple of them this morning.
I want to preface my remarks to Group No. 2 amendments. We are only on Group No. 1 amendments at the moment. I do want to point out that I have some very serious concerns with Group No. 2 which I will be addressing later in the day.
It is important for us to ask in this House when new legislation comes along, how is it serving the Canadian people? With this piece of legislation it is important to look at the before picture and the after picture. What was it like before and what is it going to be like after?
My particular concerns revolve around the pension board itself, the people who administer and manage the funds on behalf of the employees of the Canadian government including the MPs in this very House. Prior to this legislation the way the board operated or how the fund was managed was under the scrutiny of the auditor general. The House was aware of any changes that were made. There was public scrutiny. That served the public interest and the employees covered by this plan.
What does this legislation propose to do in that arena? It proposes tragically to completely remove any kind of public scrutiny of the management of these public service pension plans. It proposes to set up a totally independent separate board, a board of people managing this fund who are appointed to their positions. I have seen no reference in the act to any sort of qualifications or skill sets for this particular job. They are appointed to the positions.
There is no option for the employees or those in the union to be represented on the board. It is their own pension plan and there is no allowance for them to be represented on the board.
There is absolutely no allowance for access to information which there was prior to this bill. If someone wanted to find out some of the details about how the fund was being managed or some aspect of the ongoing management, there was the option to do that with the current legislation. With the establishment of a new arm's length board, the access to information regulations and legislation will not apply.
In the before picture the auditor general had the purview to look at this fund, to see how it was being managed and the decisions that were being made. After this legislation, guess what? It is gone. The auditor general does not have access to or will not critique the management of this fund.
We can see a consistent number of changes with this legislation that move the management of this fund of so many public service employees of the Canadian government out of public scrutiny.
The thrust of the amendments by the hon. member for St. Albert is that they try to bring back some of the accountability to the members, the employees and the public in general as to how this fund is being managed.