Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure today that I rise to speak to the motion by the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre. I commend him for bringing it forward. It harkens back to when the government, through Bill C-78, raided $30 billion out of the federal superannuates' pension and did so while breaking its own guidelines set forth in Bill S-3 which was originally introduced in the House in 1997.
While I do not support the member's motion completely, I do believe the government ought to follow its own rules as set forth in Bill S-3, which did provide at least a framework to ensure that the interests of employers were balanced with the interests of employees and the third group, the people who had already retired and stood to benefit.
Clearly the government was in violation of the principle of Bill S-3 and in fact broke its own rules by arbitrarily taking $30 billion out of the superannuates' pension fund without actually following some type of rules based methodology which would have ensured fairness to all parties involved at that time.
Bill S-3 actually put forth some level of guidelines. It outlined that the surplus could be accessed if two-thirds of the current members to the plan and two-thirds of the former members, retired employees, agreed. If they could achieve 50% but not necessarily 65% then the employer could go to arbitration. This again would help to ensure that all shareholders' interests were looked after and met in a rules based way.
The hon. member for Markham made a good point. Given the current tumultuous times in the capital markets, it would be of significant benefit to an employee or a retired individual receiving a pension to have that level of defined benefit. There would certainly be a tremendous peace of mind in that regard. I think even the Canada pension plan fund lost 15% of its value this year. I wish my portfolio had done that well. A 15% loss sounds pretty good at this juncture. The fact is that there is a benefit.
Going back over the last several years of bull markets, people started to forget that sometimes markets actually go down as opposed to going up all the time. I believe that had the hon. member for Markham still been an economist he would have foreseen this and would have demonstrated his impressions and foresight in the world of private sector bank economists.