Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the Group No. 1 amendments to Bill C-78.
This bill goes to the heart of an issue that is very important to many constituents in the ridings of all members in the House. It concerns individuals in the military, members of the RCMP, approximately 300,000 retirees, and nearly one-third of a million people in other public service activities. We oppose the bill, not for the sake of opposition but on some very important ground.
We need to go back in history. The pension plan was constructed a number of years ago. It was based on interest rates, inflation and salary increases. As a result of a combination of those factors we see now a substantial and marked surplus within the pension plan.
The government wants to take the pension surplus and put it into general revenues to use as it sees fit. Does that surplus in that pension plan belong to the government? No, it does not. The surplus belongs to the people who paid into the plan. Furthermore, the money that was put into it does not belong to the government. It belongs to the taxpayers.
Rather than taking the money away from the people who contributed it, a better way of dealing with it would be to lower the contributions they have to make without changing the amount of money they would get back. Although the pension plan is enjoying a surplus at this point in time, that has not always been the case. If we look back in history, when there has been a shortfall the taxpayer has been on the lam for putting $13 billion into the plan to pay it off.
While we are enjoying a surplus at this point in time, this will probably not be the case in the future. Interest rates will not always be as low as they are now. Nor will inflation. Although there has been a salary freeze for the last eight years at least, salaries will go up and have gone up. That will translate into an obligation on the part of the scheme to pay out more pension money.
We should maintain that surplus. It would be a buffer to ensure that the taxpayer will not have to put in more money at the end of the game to buttress the plan.
We as a party would like to speak to a number of other issues regarding the bill. One such issue is privatization. Previously the government put the contributions of workers into low interest bearing but safe rates of return vehicles. That money could also be put into vehicles that are safe but generate larger amounts of money. The bill does that, and this is what we support.
We only hope the government will do the same with the CPP. All of us who put money into the CPP know that it goes into something which generates a very small amount of return. It would be far better to put it into the market, into higher interest bearing and safe vehicles. We applaud that.
On the issue of same sex benefits, my colleague put forth a very eloquent solution to the thorny issue of what people may or may not be doing behind closed doors. My colleague mentioned something called a designated partnership.
A designated partnership could be with a brother, a sister, a family member or a friend. Both parties would be engaged in a reciprocal relationship and have reciprocal responsibility. For example, two sisters could live together for a long period of time and take care of each other. If one of them were to pass away, why should the remaining sister not benefit from her deceased sister's pension?
Obviously it was a reciprocal, long term relationship, a long term commitment between two people. This would be fair and would enable people in long term relationships to give their pensions to someone who has taken care of them in a reciprocal fashion. It would get rid of the ridiculous discussions and the thorny legal descriptions of what people may or may not be engaging in, in their personal lives.
If we take that out of the picture, the concept of a designated partnership would be fair to a wider variety of Canadians who engage in living conditions which are far more inclusive than what we have been discussing the last while.
PSAC has been very adamant about not supporting the bill. It has been in strong opposition to it because of the way it treats workers with respect to the government's plan to pocket the $30.1 billion surplus. It wants to use that surplus to pad its surpluses and tell the public it is doing a better job than it actually is in terms of how it is managing the country's finances.
We could do some very constructive work in terms of looking at what the government is trying to do with this surplus. The surplus is being reorganized in a very questionable fashion. Accountants would call it a questionable accounting practice, which enables the government to take $30 billion through subterfuge and put it into something it should not be in. It is taking it away from the workers who have earned money and put it into the plan. It is taking it from the workers and putting it somewhere else.
We are thankful the military managed to get a raise. We applaud the government for doing that. However, the working and living conditions of many people in the military have not changed substantially. In Victoria the cost of living is very high. Men and women who work for the military have a very difficult problem making ends meet, particularly in terms of accommodation. Three years ago we proposed a plan to the then minister of defence, General Dallaire, and the assistant deputy ministers involved which would enable military personnel to live more comfortably.
The plan involved making the accommodation assistance allowance applicable to all people in the military. The accommodation assistance allowance would be non-taxable. The rents that were increased egregiously, even though salaries were frozen, would be rolled back to the point in time when they were frozen. Although they have had an increase in salary, it pales in comparison to the rent increases that have occurred for their homes.
Another thing can be done to make life a little better and more comfortable for hardworking men and women in uniform. They could enable the base commanders to have more power and control over the economics of their bases. They could find some ingenious and innovative ways to generate funds for people on bases.
Historically the RCMP has not been the best paid police force in the country. Neither does it want to be, but it wants to be paid fairly. RCMP wages have plummeted to the bottom of the barrel. The way in which its salaries have been calculated has changed over the last few years.
The government has a different method of calculating the salaries of the RCMP officers so that they are now among the lowest paid police officers in the country. I implore the solicitor general and the minister of finance to pay the RCMP a salary that is at least in the middle with respect to other police forces in the country. They would find that to be fair and reasonable, given the economic circumstances we as a country are in today.
Members of the RCMP do not have the finances for the tools of their job. As we saw in my province of British Columbia, they do not even have money to put their cars back on the road after having been bashed up. They do not have the money to prosecute serious criminals. As a result serious criminals, particularly people in organized crime, are being let out and not being prosecuted, convicted and put behind bars. The reason is that the resources are not there for them to do the job.
Many RCMP officers and other police officers across the country are working for free because they feel compelled or obligated to put criminals behind bars. Unfortunately the government is not giving them the power, the resources and the tools to do their job.
I strongly urge the government to listen to the suggestions of members from this party and others and to implement them for the benefit of people who work in the public service.