Mr. Speaker, I thank all the hon. members who saw fit to join in the debate and share their views with me.
I am disappointed that the views that I hold on the subject are not more widespread, but I am interested in the fact that the debate at least has been held here tonight. It is information that we can use. It is information that we will benefit from.
I have to restate our original position: in the event of an actuarial surplus where the assets of a fund exceed the liabilities of a fund, those reserves should be used only to benefit the beneficiaries in the monthly amount or benefits they receive.
It is a straightforward issue. We view contributions to a pension plan as part of the employee's wage packet. Employees get their hourly wage or monthly salary and their pension contribution. Whether it comes out of the employee's pocket or comes directly from the employer, it is part of the employee's wage. It is being held in trust for the employee for a specific purpose.
To take that money and use it for anything other than the understood purpose is a breach of trust. There have been too many cases. Recently there has been an overwhelming number of cases. The courts are clogged with these cases, which is exactly the reason why the House of Commons should give some guidance to the arbitrators or the courts or at least say to Canadians that we have thought about this and it is our opinion that this money should be viewed as the employees'.
I want to thank the member from the Bloc Quebecois who pointed out a very important recent ruling in that province. I sometimes envy the members of the Bloc and the residents of Quebec for their attitudes on these social issues. Judge Guy Arsenault recently ruled in the Singer case, which is called Chateauneuf v TSCO of Canada Ltd., formerly known as Singer Sewing Machine, and directed that the surplus assets of the plan must be returned to the plan members. He went back retroactively from 1966 to 1984, when a private company used to say that any time a plan showed a surplus it used that for its own purposes.
That was wrong. The judge in Quebec ruled that it was wrong and was backed up further in that province by the social solidarity minister. How I wish we had a social solidarity minister. The social solidarity minister of Quebec, André Boisclair, said that the government will amend bill 102, the law which addresses the way private pension plans are to be administered, because it flirted with the idea of giving employers the right to dip into private sector pension plan surpluses. Partly because of this court ruling, they have now been convinced to back off and get their hands off private sector pension plan surpluses.
We had a glaring example in the House of Commons. As a union leader I have seen glaring examples all across the country. We had the ultimate example in Bill C-78, when the federal government knew it was on shaky ground. It knew this was a debatable issue. It was not black and white. It was a grey area as to who really had the claim on the $30 billion surplus of the public service pension plan.
It therefore introduced a bill and by act of parliament said that it was the exclusive owner of all of that $30 billion, that it was not negotiable, that it was not something the government was willing to share, that it was the government's, 100%. The government knew it was not absolutely right in that argument or it would not have had to introduce a special bill to do it. It would not have had to sacrifice Marcel Masse's career to make it his last act in parliament. The government could have done it legally.
We know it is a moral issue. It is a legal issue. It is an ethical issue. It is an issue of basic trust. When money is deducted from a person's paycheque for a specific purpose and is held in trust for them, even if it does grow it is still the exclusive property of the person on whose behalf it is being held. It should be used for nothing else but employee benefits. In our minds, it is a simple case.