Mr. Speaker, I am going to be splitting my time with the member for Surrey Central.
Going back to the comments which were made from the back corner, they seem to be prejudging how people are going to vote in the House. I do not know how they would know that. I certainly do not know how some of my colleagues are going to vote so I am not sure how they have decided that already.
I want to talk about how this issue has come to where it is at today. It seems I have had this date with destiny for quite some time. Mr. Speaker, you will know that there has been a bit of a tortured past with this issue within our own caucus. Why is it that this has come about?
When I campaigned in 1991 and 1992 I heard a lot of constituents say that there was a problem with the MP pension plan. I was not hearing much about the pay issue but I was hearing about the pension plan. Certainly there were some politics being played as I suggest there are today.
I heard over and over again that people thought that the MPs of the day had failed, that they did not want to deal with the issue of pay increases so they had decided to give themselves an increase through the back door. That is what bothered constituents more than anything else. They wanted the government and members of parliament to be up front on this issue. I agree and I think that still has not been done.
I do want to raise the issue. Some excellent comments were made earlier in the debate by people whose judgment I value, the member for Winnipeg—Transcona, and the member for New Brunswick Southwest in terms of the history on these issues of pay and pension. They were valuable and important to the debate.
I know it is hard not to take a few swipes along the way. I have been guilty of it myself. In 1995 I spoke out very strongly against the revised pension plan which was brought in. Why did I do that? I believe we still have not achieved the MP pension plan that most Canadians want. All we want, and I believe all that Canadians want, is a reasonable pension plan for members of parliament.
Was it a reasonable plan when we were raising this issue back in 1991-92? Let us examine that for a moment. At the time it was about a $6 contribution by the Government of Canada for every dollar the member put in. At the time a member only had to serve six years in the House. As someone said earlier, a member could be 27 years old and have a pension for life, albeit if the member only served six years it would not be that much, but it would continue until the member is 75 years old.
If that was a fair plan, why did the government change it in 1995? I suggest that improvements were made in 1995. They were not as much of an improvement as I would have liked to have seen, but there certainly were improvements.
Let us look at it for a moment. It was a step in the right direction. It was taken down to $3.70 for every dollar the member contributed. Although it is probably still twice as generous as a private sector plan, the age limit was changed to 55 years. People could not start drawing it until they were 55 years old.
Of course there was an opt-out provision for the class of 1993 and some of us took it because we were essentially dared to either take the second plan, which is kind of super-enhanced to a lesser degree, or nothing. So we did take it. But there were improvements. It ended the double dipping as was said earlier. We ended up with closure on that debate. I think we are still a ways away from it.
We need to talk about what happened in 1997. After the review, in 1998 the legislation went through, but in 1997 there was a plan calling for expense allowance increases, an enhanced severance package, and of course the opt-in provisions which some of our members took advantage of.
There was no provision for that more reasonable plan at least for the very MPs who had opted out. Some people have made the case that we do not want to do that because that creates another class of MP pensions. There are four classes of MP pension plans now. What difference would it make if there was a fifth? That was not a good argument.
What bothered me more than anything in the 1997 package which was put before the House, and which I vowed I would never be part of again, was it was essentially passed in the dark of the night. There was no debate and no vote in the House of Commons. The very thing we are sent here to do by our constituents is to debate the issues and vote on those issues at the end of the day. I must say that today's package moves a long way to recognize that was a problem. That was my biggest single problem with what happened in 1997. Many people in my riding asked me what we were trying to do by sliding that package through in the night.
Every elected member in the House should have the opportunity to debate the issues. If it is our pay, that is still fair game. We have to debate those issues. There needs to be a vote at the end of the day. I wanted to ensure that happened this time around.
Some of my colleagues joined in 1997 and I do not fault them for that. We have different situations. We have different financial situations. But the 1997 plan, the 1995 plan and of course the plan today still are all overly generous and do not meet the test we put forward in 1992.
What I am trying to say is I am not in favour of the current plan, although I understand many members are and most probably will be opting in. I have a problem with it. We need to go further to change it to a plan that is less generous than it is right now.
As I said earlier, there have been many good cases for different points of view on this issue, but I wanted to put my point of view on the record. I think this enhanced plan today has missed the mark again. There should have been a plan offered for those members of parliament from the class of 1993 that were out that was based on a fifth option, a fifth package. There are four classes in the plan right now. What would have been wrong with having one more class for those people?
I have talked to a number of constituents over the last seven years regarding this issue. They want us to be up front and honest with them about the issues. If we feel we deserve a pay increase, we should get up in the House and make the case for it.
I see some benefit in having an independent panel make recommendations to the House, but it really is for the members of the House to make those kinds of decisions in the end. It seems to me the most important issue from the point of view of our constituents is that we do not want to do through the back door what we are not willing to do through the front door, which is to have a super-enhanced pension plan because we are not addressing the real issue which is probably the pay issue.
In the previous parliament, Jim Silye, a former colleague of mine from Calgary Centre, made an important comment about what he believed was the best way to handle this. I agreed with him at the time and I agree with him today. If members were paid a proper amount we could do away with the special tax free portion, the tax free expense allowance, and members could look after their own retirement income. He made a good suggestion at the time. People laughed at him because he was a self-made millionaire and did not need the pension plan himself.
However, we do have to recognize that people come from different walks of life and we do not want to limit this place just to people who can sort of buy their way in here, people who are independently wealthy. We want a cross-section of Canadians in the House of Commons.
The class of 1997 as I said are automatically in the plan. There is no opt-out provision for them. The class of 1993, the ones we are really talking about today, are going to be compelled by this plan to be in it. Members of our party have been involved in some of these negotiations and I do not fault them for that, but my own view is I think we still have a way to go to correct this plan and I would like to see that happen.
In 1993 I committed to work to make this pension plan a fair one. I think that is what my constituents want. They want members of parliament to have a good basis for pay and they want members to have a good pension plan but it has to be fair. It has to meet the test and I do not believe that has happened today.