Mr. Speaker, once again I have to address the bill.
It is a sad occasion as far as I am concerned when a property rights bill that I brought before parliament has fallen by the wayside. However, I will save that matter for another day.
It seems that the longer the Liberals are in power, the more often we have to point out that this is a sad day for democracy in Canada. Bill C-78 is another one of those sad days for Canadians under this arrogant, self-serving Liberal regime.
Canadians do not have to believe me. All they have to do is listen to the words of a pension plan expert. On May 2, Mic Cohen of the actuarial consultants William Mercer Ltd. was quoted in the Ottawa Citizen as saying:
The handling of this bill is symptomatic of the government's failure to come clean with taxpayers and negotiate with its own unions. It's a sad commentary on democracy. When the government isn't prepared to agree, it bullies its way. Now I think they are doing all the right things to fix the plan but the process stinks.
I agree with the actuary from William Mercer. The process stinks. It stinks to high heaven. The Liberals make it stink even worse by invoking closure or time allocation in the House to arbitrarily take away $30 billion from a pension fund surplus that rightfully belongs to both public servants who paid into their own pension plan and the taxpayers of Canada who paid the other share.
I notice there are smiles and grins across the way. This is a serious situation for the people involved.
The government is saying that the 670,000 employees and pensioners who are covered by this plan do not have a say in how the surplus will be managed or spent. By limiting debate of this 200 page monstrosity in the House of Commons and through committee, the government is also saying that it does not want the taxpayers to find out what it is doing with the share of the surplus paid into the pension plan by taxpayers. It has hidden it. The government is not disclosing what it is doing with it.
The Ottawa Citizen also quoted another pension expert, pension lawyer Fiona Campbell. She said:
This bill is unprecedented. I'm not aware of pension legislation of this magnitude in both what it's trying to do and how quickly it's being done with no input from the people affected.
We just witnessed, even after this quotation, that the government has invoked closure on the bill. It is limiting debate.
The Citizen article went on to say that Ms. Campbell is worried that the government's actions may allow other employers to lobby for changes that will allow them to get at pension surpluses when they need some cash. Is this the tip of the iceberg? Is this just the beginning? If it is this easy for the government to just run roughshod over the rights of Canadians, when will it do it again and who else will take that as a precedent?
Why is this so worrying? It is because for the first time the government will have the power to change premiums or benefits without seeking parliamentary approval.
Why does the government need this unprecedented power? Why do so many bills rammed through the House create new powers for ministers to bypass parliament? The absolute power by the Prime Minister and his cabinet make a mockery of democracy except at election time. I guess the logic of the cabinet is why bother going through the trouble of running a bill through the House of Commons when we can just pass one bill to give us the power to bypass parliament from now until forevermore. This is called enabling legislation. It enables the government to bypass parliament and put to regulation whatever it wishes.
Back in April of 1997, I wrote an article called “Power Grab”, which cited a number of ways the fundamental principles of democracy were being violated by the Liberal government. It is getting worse not better since I put that out.
Bill Krause, president of the Social Sciences Employees Association, told the standing committee, and I quote:
This plan is unlike any other in Canada or the world and gives the government unique powers which could be abused in generating revenue from its employees. In essence, it gives them the power to tax employees.
Do members want to see the hypocrisy of the government? Let us look at another act of parliament that the government passed to regulate the pensions of employees working for federally regulated industries, the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985.
Here is how the government requires federally regulated employers to manage surpluses in federally regulated plans.
Section 9.2(1) states:
If an actuarial report filed under subsection 12(3) indicates that there is a surplus, no part of that surplus may be refunded to the employer unless
(a) the employer establishes that
(i) it is entitled to the surplus, or part of it, under the pension plan, or
(ii) it has a claim to the surplus, or part of it, under this section;
—and the Superintendent of Financial Institutions consents to the refund of the surplus to the employer.
Subsection 3 is the most important. “An employer has a claim to the surplus, or part of it, if, after being notified of the employer's proposal for a refund of that surplus or part of it, at least two-thirds of the persons, members or former members of the pension plan, notify the employer that they consent to the proposal”.
The hypocrisy. I have to ask why there is this double standard. Why is there one set of democratic pension rules for federally regulated industries and a dictatorial set of rules for the federal government? Why pass one set of reasonable rules to govern pension surpluses in federally regulated industries and then pass Bill C-78 which gives the government total control to do anything it wants with the pension surpluses? Why?
One more question. Why did the government not put the same provisions from the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985 in Bill C-78? Why? Because it has the absolute power to do anything it wants. And we all know that absolute power corrupts absolutely. To cap it all off, the government has made sure the secrets of how it handles or mishandles pension surpluses remain secret.
Bill C-78 denies the auditor general's conducting an audit of the board's investments. The pension investment auditors will not have the power to report to parliament and the board will be exempt from access to information laws.
A couple of hours ago I asked the government some questions. They are on the record. I do not think I have to repeat them. In fact I do not have time to repeat them. It is refusing to answer these questions. We are supposed to have a debate here and not only does the government invoke closure on this and limit the debate, but it does not even answer our questions. It does not even have the courtesy to reply to the very serious questions we ask. I have just asked another series of questions. I think it is about time the government came down off its high horse, became a little less arrogant and responded to our questions.