Mr. Chairman, I am glad the hon. member has asked a question about employees of the House.
He perhaps knows, or perhaps does not because he is somewhat newer than other colleagues, that I am the only House of Commons employee ever to have been elected to this place. I think that at least on this score I know something about it. Without any pretension, I would like to say to the hon. member that I probably know a little more than he does about working conditions on Parliament Hill.
I also contributed to the House of Commons employees' plan. When I ceased to be a member of the House of Commons staff and was elected to the Ontario legislature, I was handed back my premiums with 2% interest. I was not permitted to transfer it to the plan that I had as an elected official.
When I came back as a member of parliament for the federal House of Commons, the federal civil service contributions could not be bought back and included in this plan. How many Canadians know that? How many Canadians know that even though I served in the House for 14 years, I was never able to apply one cent of that service toward another federal pension plan, namely the members of parliament plan?
Whereas, for instance, if one worked for Nortel in an Ottawa plant and was then transferred to Nortel in a Toronto plant, that person is entitled to transfer the pension plan. In my case, not only was I in the same plant, I was in the same room but was not entitled to transfer. How many people know that?
It is fine to say that the plan is generous, and perhaps there are aspects of it that are, but there are also sectors in which it is hopelessly deficient compared to plans elsewhere.
Let us not portray this thing as being a way to get rich. That is not factually correct. There are many people who have very generous plans in the private sector where the employee contributes one dollar toward a registered retirement savings account and the employer contributes a similar amount, or even stock options. Officials in the private sector are treated not only as generously but, in many cases, far better than we are.
In terms of the public service pension plan generally, I am pleased to answer that question too, because members of the House will know that for many, many years the public service pension plan was deficient. It did not have enough contributions for its payout and the taxpayers of Canada, through the Government of Canada, supplemented that account in order to have enough money to pay the pensions.
In another period, because of demographics and so on, the most recent one, when that account experienced a surplus, is it not normal that the taxpayers of Canada would get some of that back, given that they had contributed to it in the first place?
Finally, we have made the plan self-sustaining. We have made the public service pension plan self-sustaining. I believe that was the right thing to do for the long term.
Even the Canada pension plan has that self-sustaining ability which the U.S. social security does not have. Many things have been done in public sector pensions, and pensions generally, even pensions in the private sector, that did not exist before. I will not give too much detail about that—