Mr. Speaker, we are debating Bill C-78, the public service pension plan raid. At least that is what I would suggest the title should be.
As we have heard from many of the people who have spoken on this bill, what it all boils down to is the government getting its sticky fingers on $30 billion of private pension funds.
The money that the government insists on putting its sticky fingers on is being taken from the Canadian people who paid into this fund. Let us look at who it is taking this money from. It is taking $14.9 billion from the public service plan.
It was only weeks ago that we had to stand in the House all night to debate, while the government's only solution was to force these men and women across Canada back to work. That was absolutely unacceptable. Now, to add insult to injury, it is helping itself to the pension plan fund that rightly belongs to PSAC. That is absolutely wrong.
The government is taking $2.4 billion from the RCMP members' plan. It is ironic that I attended a community policing forum last week in my riding. I spoke to an RCMP member as well as the mayor of the town of Sidney, Don Amos. They are very frustrated with what is going. In that city there is a fairly large detachment of RCMP officers. As we know, in British Columbia we have 400 vacancies that are yet to be filled because there are no officers to fill them. The government will not allocate the funds to train people. There are four vacant positions in Sidney, the community in which I live. I am told by the mayor that those four positions are 100% funded by the municipality, yet there is nobody to fill them. They go unfilled.
I was told by one of the other police officers that they have been advised that they should be using all the gas coupons they have received to fill up their police cars. Morale is very low. What is the government going to do to add insult to injury? It is going to raid their money. That is absolutely unacceptable.
It is outrageous that the government sees this $30 billion surplus as its money. Thirty per cent of the pension plan fund is funded by the members. It is funded by the employees of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. It is their money and the government is confiscating it. That is unacceptable.
When the government does things like this it is clearly embarrassed about it. It is not putting up speakers. The last speakers on this bill have been my colleague from the NDP and another Reform member. The Progressive Conservatives and the Bloc are also speaking on this bill. Why? Because the government is embarrassed. We fully understand that it will most likely bring in time allocation or closure on this bill because it is embarrassed.
I cannot believe that we are fighting to get basic, core funding for a national institution, one of which we are very proud from coast to coast, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The government treats those people like the musical ride and nothing more. It makes them go around in circles and they do not get anything out. That is unacceptable. What is the government doing now? It is confiscating money from a fund which those members paid into.
It is the same thing with the PSAC members who went on strike for a long time. The government's only solution to that was to come down with a big hammer and force them back to work. These are the facts. They are indisputable. They are there. Why is the government so silent? Because it is absolutely embarrassed about it.
There is a very simple solution to this. The Reform Party has put forward numerous amendments. We will watch when they come up for debate. My colleague from Alberta put forward these amendments. There are a number of them. At the end of the day what we need is a pension investment board. Let us remove it from the government and politics and have it at arm's length from the government. It should be made up of experts in the field, in the private sector, who can manage these pension funds so the Liberals cannot get their sticky fingers on them and raid them. Then the Liberals will stand and say that they balanced the budget.
Who has balanced the budget? The union members. The RCMP members. Who else is the government robbing? It is robbing the Canadian forces plan of $12.9 billion. These are the men and women who are in active combat in Kosovo, putting their lives on the line in very scary situations. While they are on the other side of the world fighting for humanity, what is their government doing behind their backs? It is stealing their pension money. That is unacceptable. I will retract that.