Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Macleod stated:
I...the Reform Party candidate for the Macleod riding, do hereby state that I strongly oppose the current MP pension plan. I will not accept this pension if I become eligible for it and I will do everything that I can do to reform the plan and make it fair.
The former leader of the Reform Party who is now seeking the leadership of the CA, the hon. member for Calgary Southwest said:
It is the intention of Reform MPs to opt out of the MP pension plan. We call upon every other member of the House to do likewise. “Opt out or get out” will be the cry in the constituencies. It is a cry which must be respected if fairness and leadership by example and integrity are to be restored to Parliament and any budget it endorses.
That is typical of what the former leader of the Reform Party had to say. He basically said the same thing in terms of his limousine, “Here are the keys. Take it. I do not want it.” That was in 1993 when he first came to the House. He regretted making that decision because he eagerly took the keys to the limousine when he was re-elected in 1997 and he became Leader of the Official Opposition. To my knowledge he still has the limousine, the driver and the keys.
He said the same thing of Stornoway. Remember that one? He said that Stornoway was nothing more than a bingo parlour and that he would never live there. It would be obscene to think that the leader of the Reform Party would live at Stornoway at public expense. “I simply will not do it,” said the leader of the Reform Party, the hon. member for Calgary Southwest who is now seeking the leadership of the CA. However he is there and he is not holding any bingo games for charity. He is living there at public expense, which is what we would expect every leader of the opposition party to do. However, it was convenient at the time to rail about it. “I will not do it,” he said. Now he is doing it and he is entitled to do it but he railed against it until he got there.
It has been mentioned that he started out sitting in this place in the second or third row because he did not want to be a favourite or a star. He wanted to be a lonely MP and not lead the pack. It did not take him long to realize that if one is going to be a leader of a party in the House, then one sits in the front row and leads the attack on the government. It did not take him long to change his mind on that one.
It did not take him long to change his mind on the fact that his hairstyle might have been a little outdated. I cannot say the same thing because I do not have much anymore. He had a bit of a makeover in terms of hair and a dye job and all the rest of it, including a facial and voice lessons to make his voice sound better in the House of Commons. I would call those enormous flip-flops.
Not knowing how politics worked, they came into this place almost defying the House of Commons itself and the so-called professional politicians who are in Ottawa. It is like the west wants in and they are going to stick to their principles. The principles just went out the window. Now the principles are going to be watered down by this so-called broader base of support called the UA or the CA. The cry that the west wants in is going to be diminished because Ontario is going to take over the party. We will find out how lost or disoriented those members become once that happens, which will probably be on June 24 if my calendar is right. Those are major flip-flops and are the types of things that have to be considered when we look at this issue.
This issue was brought up in this place by the very party that defied pensions. Those members said they would never take them, that they would never opt in. Those members wanted out and in terms of the quotes, I could go on and on.
The leader of the CA party, formerly the Reform Party, said in the September 12 edition of the Vancouver Sun :
Canadians will know which MPs are greedy and which really care about taxpayers....Believe me, the voters won't soon forget those MPs who promised integrity in government but decided to `pig out' while the trough was still full.
Words can hardly describe that type of attitude in this place.
Now those people want the pension issue put to rest. And why would they not? They have suddenly realized that they have given up eight years of their career to sit here like we all do, knowing when they leave there is nothing for them or their families if something should happen to them, except for a bit of life insurance. I suppose it has been a hard lesson for them and that is one area with which I can sympathize. Maybe they were opposing it for the right reasons, but I do not know what they would be.
A certain sense of reality has set into the minds of many of those members since 1993 and the reality will be when they are done with politics. Most of us are done with politics beyond middle age because most of us do not come into this place at the age of 20 or 30. Some of us have had a career or two before we came here. In most cases this is basically ending our working career.
For those that leave businesses behind, there has to be a little bit of something there. The argument is that they are going to retire on a gold plated pension plan. As I mentioned in a previous intervention, under the existing plan, which will still exist after this debate and will not change but will allow the people who opted out to come back, the deputy leader of the Conservative Party and I would get all of $20,000 a year in a pension. How many times have we read in the newspaper about a million dollar pension for this MP or that MP? What the press and some politicians were doing in a case like that, including some Reformers at that time, was taking the worst case scenario or the best case scenario.
For example, they might point to the present Prime Minister who has been here since 1962, having come to this place when he was younger than 30 years of age, or the Deputy Prime Minister who has been here just about as long having been elected at the early age of 30. They extrapolate from that that he will live to age 90 after having served here 30 years. They use that as the example which fits all of us.
The truth is that most members in this place do not qualify for a pension. The life of a federal member of parliament, believe it or not, is equivalent to that of a pro football player. How long does a pro football player play in the NFL or the CFL? On average it is about four years. The average life of a member of parliament is just slightly higher than that but it is certainly less than six years. All the statistics will prove that.
The sad reality is that most members will leave this place without a pension, with nothing. Most people that leave this place usually go out feet first politically because most of us are defeated. There are a few of us that get defeated and have the opportunity or the privilege to come back into this place, but that is not the norm.
We are talking about some fairness on the part of those that oppose pensions for MPs and the media. Why do they not take as an example the member for Saint John, the deputy leader of our party, who has spent most of her adult life in public life? The only pension that she will have at the end of this term would be a pension of about $20,000 a year.
We do not fall into our seats in this place. Most of us have worked in our communities and have worked in other levels of government or behind the scenes of government as volunteers. We worked in our communities and left our homes and families behind to come to Ottawa. None of us believe in a gold-plated pension plan, but the truth is the public wants good people representing them.
If every safety net completely disappears in this place called Ottawa, good and worthy Canadians of standing in this place who represent their constituents will say they are not sure they want to drive or fly 3,000 miles a week to go to Ottawa, only to find out at the end of four years they are defeated and have nothing. At the end of six years they would have a measly $20,000 pension. The truth is in the private sector just about anyone in here could make more than that.
The truth is politics, and this should not happen, diminishes people's attractiveness to the private sector once they have been here. There are many exceptions to that rule and many people flourish after they leave politics. Those people are exceptions to the rule. At the end of an election when we are on the losing end we are not in high demand, believe me.
We have been saying all along that there has to be fairness and equity in the pension plan. If members want to opt in, my position is that they should be able to do so. If they do have to swallow themselves whole on this issue as the Reformers will have to do, let them do so. They have probably learned by their mistakes in terms of railing against it for so many years in this place.