Mr. Speaker, many of the motions that have been put forward in my name deal with trying to take out of the bill the language that would enable government to seize the $30 billion pension plan. That of course is the whole goal of the bill.
If we look back at how this whole debate got started, we will see that it was framed around one simple statement made by Alain Jolicoeur, the chief negotiator for HRDC in these matters. About 18 months ago he said that employees and pensioners had no priorietary interest in any surplus in the pension plan.
This statement was further compounded when the President of the Treasury Board said, “The employees and the unions don't stand a chance in hell of getting their hands on the pension plan”. That is a quote, Mr. Speaker. I am not trying to use language that is not correct. This is where we started from.
Obviously it is a basic tenet of the trade union movement and anybody involved with employee benefit plans that all pension surpluses are the exclusive property of the employees who paid into the plan because it is wages. It is part of the pay package and wage package.
As we look at this, it makes one wonder, if the President of the Treasury Board really believed that the employees have no right to claim that money, why then is he changing the legislation? Why then is he going to all this trouble of drafting 200 pages of legislation to get the enabling language to now say that the government can take the money out of the pension plan?
In the changes we have put forward, we are trying to challenge the myth being perpetrated that the employees do not have any right to any part of any surplus. That is certainly what we are being told by the minister's actions.
If one needs further evidence of the fact that the money is the employees' money, it is used that way at the bargaining table. Whenever the bargaining agents for the various public sector employees are at the table with the government, the government uses the whole pension package as part of the wage issue. It says “Well, we can't give you much of a raise this year, but don't forget that you have always got that lovely pension”. When it is to its advantage, the government uses the pension as part of the wage package. Now we are being told it is something completely separate.
As I pointed out earlier, there was a handshake deal if you will, a longstanding recognition of an issue when back in the 1960s the government wanted pensions off the bargaining table. It did not want to negotiate pensions at the same time it was negotiating wages because it was far too complex. The deal was that if the pension issue was taken off the bargaining table, the government would never unilaterally alter the terms and conditions of the pension plan while this deal held, while this pact or accord was in place.
That has been violated. It has been shattered. It has been broken. Exactly what this bill does is it alters the terms and conditions of the pension plan without going to the other party and without negotiations.
There is further language in here that gives the President of the Treasury Board the right to further alter the contributions any time he sees fit. Any time an actuary says it had better crank up the contributions from the employees' side, that can be done without coming back to the advisory board or the House of Commons, which is where it should come back to because the terms are being changed unilaterally. It gives unprecedented powers to the minister that way.
Many of the amendments put forward by the Reform Party and by our party deal with this issue. They try to take that language out of the bill that enables the government to seize not only the current pension but all future pension surpluses generated by the new public sector pension investment board.