Mr. Speaker, I hope the points of order my colleague from Bourassa raised are not going to cut into my 10 minutes of speaking time. If my colleague interrupts me for 10 minutes, I hope I will still have my time to speak.
I was talking about the importance for parliament of having a new approach when the time comes to deduct money for employee pensions. Although this amendment was not introduced by the Bloc Quebecois, it is extremely important.
Up to now, everything that went on with the pension fund was out of parliament's control. When the government decides, for example, as the President of the Treasury Board did, to play around with it a bit, it causes distortion. Canada's parliament is never involved in the approach and the arrangements for consensus on what people should contribute weekly to their pension.
What is particularly deplorable as well is that these people, who have contributed to the accumulated surpluses we have now have annual incomes of some $9,000. We are not talking about huge fortunes.
Once again, I understand that the Liberal Party wants to go after these people. These people do not contribute to the Liberal Party coffers like the big multinationals, the major banks and big business. The Liberals give big business a sort of total absolution, they try not to bother it too much. However, those who have had to pay from the start, as I said in my first speech, are the employees of the federal public service, women in the federal public service, who have been denied pay equity. It is also the people on employment insurance who have paid for the fight against this government's deficit and debt.
There is one who quite neatly hides behind the President of the Treasury Board—the Minister of Finance. We never see him taking part in debates when it comes time to siphon off some money so that the government can then say how wonderful the Minister of Finance is for putting Canada back on track, reducing the deficit and starting to pay down the debt.
It forgets to say that this has been done at the expense of unemployed workers. It forgets to say that women are the losers in the pay equity battle. It forgets to say quite a bit.
Another thing we have noticed is that the minister always sends others to the front lines. The Minister of Human Resources Development will be sent out to cut EI payments. The President of the Treasury Board will be sent after this amount. We have talked about robbing, raiding, taking over, and we have used parliamentary terms like siphoning, but we have stopped short of unparliamentary language. I could have crossed the line a while ago, but for your wise ruling, Mr. Speaker.
The point of Motion No. 38, by the Bloc Quebecois, is to have the Income Tax Act apply. Under the Income Tax Act, when there are surpluses in certain plans, the government may decide what to do with them, as provided in the legislation.
All the plans are listed in the Income Tax Act. There are one, two or three exceptions, those before us today. At the time, it was agreed, and this is provided for in the act, that the armed forces, RCMP and public service pension funds would not be in the Income Tax Act.
Now, we simply want to find a way to deal with the surpluses and make sure that the Income Tax Act applies. This is merely a question of fairness, and it also shows the employees' good faith. They say “We want to go back to the act of 1985, and not just for the benefits. We want to take it as it is. We also want our pension plans to be listed in the Income Tax Act, which provides for a mechanism when a surplus becomes significant, so as to avoid having excessive surpluses”.
I would like to conclude with a motion. I move:
That all government members, whose government imposed a time allocation motion on the review of Bill C-78, be prevented from speaking during today's debate on this bill.