That is pure nonsense and he knows it.
In any event, Stephen Harper, who refused to run for the Reform Party in the 1997 election said this about the case of the Reformers swallowing themselves whole or flip-flopping on this pension issue. I am quoting from the National Post , the official Reform Party CA publication. The owner of the paper is Conrad Black but at least he had the decency to print this.
Stephen Harper said, “It is a case of you scratch my back, I will scratch yours and all the skin comes off the taxpayers”. Stephen Harper is president of the National Citizens' Coalition. He said, “It is a terrible betrayal of all the people who voted Reform”. It is a betrayal of the people who voted Reform because many of those members, and I can point at them now, came in here in that bit of rage against pensions.
Some of them came here because they defied everything that parliament stood for. For example the present leader of the CA, formerly the leader of the Reform Party, the member for Calgary Southwest, is the guy who took the keys. They handed him the keys to a chauffeur driven car in 1993. He made a point of having the press there when he eagerly passed the keys back and said, “This is a perk, I do not want this car”.
In 1997 after having walked to the House of Commons on shoe leather as most of us do, he decided, “That car might have been a good idea. Why don't I keep the car? It is four years later and people will have forgotten what we did in 1993”. It was a publicity stunt. People will forget. He is quoted as saying that people have 20 second memories. I guess he figured that the 20 second memory would kick in or kick out. People would not remember, but they did. It is on tape. We watch it on the evening news from time to time. They love to replay that one.
There was a major flip-flop on that one. That was a perk. That is one thing most of us intelligently think when we look at a minister's or the Prime Minister's life and how busy they are going from here to there. I think they are entitled to a driver to get around the city to go from meeting to meeting.
Then there was the Stornoway issue. For those people who do not know but I think most people do, Stornoway is the official residence of the official opposition leader. That is at public expense as is 24 Sussex Drive. We are saying the Leader of the Opposition is entitled to a home because that person is sacrificing a lot to lead a party and it is a very responsible position. It is the same for the Prime Minister. No one would deny the Prime Minister 24 Sussex Drive and what goes with it.
In this case the Leader of the Opposition mocked it. He said, “Stornoway is nothing more than a fancy bingo hall. I am not going to stay there. Forget about it. It is not in the cards”. Except when he got elected as Leader of the Official Opposition he changed his mind. He suddenly forgot what he said. It looked pretty attractive from his point of view after he became Leader of the Official Opposition. So guess what? He moved into Stornoway. How did he get there? He got there in that car provided to him by the taxpayers of Canada, the very car he said he would never drive in.
He moved into the hall and, insult of all insults, he did not turn it into a bingo hall as he said he would. That could have offset the expenses of running Stornoway if he wished. If he took in 500 bucks a night on bingo he could turn it over to general revenue. Is the finance minister or the minister responsible for the treasury board here? I do not see them. I guess that was part of the scenario, “I will turn it into a bingo hall and hand over the 500 bucks or whatever we take in each night and that will help offset the expenses”. But no, he did not do that. He is living there with his family which he is entitled to do. We do not deny that. But the truth is he railed against it.
That is the type of flip-flop which I think the Canadian people find unsavoury. In fact supporters of the former Reform Party find it unsavoury. That is exactly what Stephen Harper is referring to in the National Post article. I think the headline on the article tells it all. It reads in big print in the National Post of June 13, 2000, “Grit pension ploy divides alliance” and it is subtitled, “Bill prompts party to drop hardline stance against system it had often attacked”. Those members attacked it often and ferociously for a number of years. I could read a number of other quotes of what they had to say about the pension plan.
The point I am attempting to make is simply how could any party rail against a pension plan the way those members did simply to get a seat in the House of Commons? It was a convenient thing to rail against. Then they came into this place and completely changed their position. Hence, they were swallowing themselves whole. What other party could get away with it?
This is pretty cute. We are going through the bill clause by clause, not to lose focus on the bill itself. There is a provision which gives them a year. Maybe the officials at the desk can point this out when it is their turn to consult with the minister. This is quite cute. This is part of their scenario. They are hoping against hope that the election will be held within the year. Then they could safely get away with what they are doing.
Tonight in the House I noticed how clever they are. We have to give them points for being clever. About half of them stood up to vote for the bill and they were looking around to see if their neighbour would stand up to vote for it. Some of them, and I will give them credit for this, had the backbone to stand up tonight to vote for this pension change. Many of them did not. They were looking over their shoulders to see what might happen. Paranoia surrounds that party to begin with.
There was certainly no free vote which is another thing they railed and chatted about almost continuously between 1993 and 1997.
Anyway, they now will have a year. They have to decide within a year whether they are going to buy into the pension plan. This is their second go around.