Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-78, the public service pension plan act.
The hon. member for Oak Ridges talked about how the government had every angle covered when it wrote the bill and how nothing could ever go wrong. I point to the Canada pension plan and successive governments saying no problem, don't worry, be happy; nothing can go wrong with the Canada pension plan. Those were smooth assurances to soothe the fear of taxpayers, to soothe fears of actuaries and to convey hope.
Now we see the plan increasing the amount of pension contributions every year until it is up to almost 10%. That is hardly the kind of action which engenders a lot of confidence.
The Liberals have proudly characterized themselves as deficit slayers, but it takes real creativity to call themselves deficit slayers given the record of the Liberal government. In the context of this important debate on Bill C-78 it is time to set the record straight.
During the budget debates and in the many kind words the Liberals spoke about themselves thereafter, I happened to hear the Minister of Health on TV saying that two years from now we would have real money for health care in Canada. I wonder if anybody thought what two years from now would mean to the Liberal government. It means, of course, an election. It will need all kinds of money to put that health budget before Canadians.
We are not complaining about health spending. In fact we have called for increased spending, but to hold it off for two years so that it can raid this pension and end up with the money for it seems to be kind of cynical. If I am rather cynical about it, I think it is understandable.
Any deficit that the Liberals have eliminated has not been through genuine cost reduction but through direct tax increases on the backs of Canadians and the raiding of public funds. First the Liberals chose the Canada pension plan. It took a number of years to bring it practically to its knees. Goodness knows whether the planned increases in premiums will make enough of a difference.
Employment insurance premiums are held at far too high a level while people on employment insurance are struggling to make ends meet. This just does not seem to be the way a government that cares for its people, as the Liberal government says it does, does things. Now it is turning to the public service pension plan.
Despite all of this the debt is still far too high. Taxes are far too high. In light of this $30 billion take the finance minister still refuses to give Canadian taxpayers a tax break. All these raids on the backs of Canadians, combined with high marginal rates and bracket creep, give us the highest taxes of any country in the G-7.
What is next? The Liberals have established themselves as the most creative break and enter artists of our day. This audacious legislation is a good example. This is a break-in through the back door by way of legislation rather than through the front door by way of negotiation.
I want to talk about what the Liberals are proposing to do with the public service pension plan. In that regard Bill C-78 amounts to nothing more than another creative Liberal tax grab. They have been slowly liquidating the surplus in the pension plan over the past few years. That is just one of the ways they have been able to balance the books. It is not by cutting spending but by raiding surpluses and taxing Canadians higher and higher year after year.
Another claim the government makes is that it has been fiscally prudent, but the truth is that the finance minister is improving the health of the federal government's finances, among other things, by dipping into civil service pension piggybanks. Since 1996, I say rather cynically, $10.1 billion has been saved by not making interest payments on the actuarial surplus. On another point which has nothing to do with fiscal prudence the civil service is overlooked in the disposal of excess funds.
These types of actions by the Liberals are not only becoming more common but are more than ever being seen for what they are: morally reprehensible behaviour on the part of the Liberal government. Yet the government attempts to justify its actions in the name of deficit reduction. The great scandal in this regard is that it is not at all about deficit fighting, as the Liberals would have us believe. Rather, it is about their continuing quest for a stream of taxes on overburdened taxpayers.
Sadly taxpayers are the odd men out in this equation. Taxpayers own the surpluses in the public service pension plans. Taxpayers in the past have covered $13 billion worth of shortfalls in the public service pension plans. Taxpayers will be on the hook for future deficits. Therefore taxpayers must be protected.
The simple fact is that the surplus in the plan should be left alone. The Liberals should just take their hands off it. The government should not be using it for any other purpose than to ensure the plan remains solvent now and in the future. The bottom line is that any surplus in a pension plan should not be available to any employer, government or private. It should remain in the plan for the benefit of current and future retirees and act as a cushion against future deficits.
I will turn now to a discussion of some of the amendments dealing with the issue of conjugal relationships. These amendments are in response to lower court decisions which see certain benefits such as pension survivor benefits currently afforded to married and common law couples being extended to same sex relationships.
The central issue surrounds the definition of spouse. The government has rightly affirmed the traditional definitions of spouse and marriage. It is important that we begin with the proper definitions. According to the Oxford English Dictionary , a conjugal relationship is one of marriage or the relationship between husband and wife and conjugal rights are those rights, especially in reference to sexual relations, regarded as exercisable in law by each partner in a marriage.
Spouse and marriage have been given special status in Canadian law because of their distinctive characteristics and unique contribution to Canadian society. It is important therefore that the current definition of spouse be retained and that an appropriate range of benefits and obligations be afforded the marital relationship, really the marital home. However the criteria proposed in Bill C-78 for extended survivor benefits are unacceptably vague.
The bill defines a survivor as either one who is married to the contributor or one who can establish that he or she was cohabiting in a relationship of a conjugal nature with the contributor for at least one year immediately before the death of the contributor.
Conjugality is one of several criteria which establish that benefits and obligations for heterosexual conjugal relationships are among all forms of domestic partnerships unique in their capacity to procreate children. It is this kind of relationship that routinely involves the caring for and nurturing of children. As the House knows there is a cost incurred through child rearing. Benefits have been extended to the spousal relationship to enhance the stability of the family relationship, as well to recognize the long term commitment and interdependence of the relationship.
Within Bill C-78 is the intent to extend benefits to same sex couples. When considering benefits for domestic relationships other than a spousal relationship, is sexual activity an appropriate criterion on which to extend benefits? What about other long term relationships of financial or emotional interdependency which do not involve sexual activity?
The new definition in Bill C-78 could include roommates who are sexually intimate once in the course of a year long cohabitation, yet exclude an unmarried adult brother and sister or two adult sisters who have lived together in a household for many years and are dependent one on another.
If the federal government plans to extend benefits beyond spousal or marital relationships to other types of relationships, it should consider the original rationale for giving the benefit to determine the basis on which non-spousal relationships should qualify. Furthermore, broad public debate should take place first before changes are made in a piecemeal fashion, the way the Liberals are doing with the bill.
We see again the government blindly going ahead with a policy that is not only questionable but completely unjustified since no debate has yet taken place with respect to altering the definitions of spouse and marriage as they are held within the law.
Before the government expands or changes the definition of spouse or marriage there must first be a proper debate in parliament and among all Canadians on such an important issue. We know that a strong majority of Canadians uphold and affirm the traditional definition and concept of marriage. The government's attempt to define conjugal relationships and explain who constitutes a survivor is a mess and impossible to determine from the wording in the bill.
In closing I find it interesting that the Liberals have recently begun a survey to understand why there is such low morale in the public service and why in the west people feel alienated from them. They are schizophrenic. What the Liberals are doing in the bill is only typical behaviour for them and offers the answer to their own question. Is it any wonder Canadians are increasingly skeptical of the government?