Fair enough. I am just saying this is a fact. I do not blame the Leader of the Official Opposition because he was not here. The fact is his party has a lot of responsibility to bear for the fact that this kind of thing is even part of the political discourse in this place. This is what was asked for at a certain point. People must be careful of what they ask for because they might get it. The Liberals took the Reform Party up on it and provided an opportunity for people to opt out of the pension plan. That is where this whole opting in and opting out business came about.
The Leader of the Official Opposition complained about the irrevocability of the opting in clause or the fact that if a person does not opt in, that person can never opt in. This also has its origins in the Reform Party. What this is designed to prevent is the very thing we had to go through a year or so ago when we had Reform Party members, both privately and publicly, trying to crawl back into the pension plan.
What happens is people change their minds and then we have to have this very undignified process of having members doing something that they said they would never do. I submit this also has its origins in the politics of the Reform Party and now the Alliance.
Some of the things that the Leader of the Official Opposition said probably would have been better left unsaid for the party's sake. I could not let the opportunity go by without giving what I think is a more faithful rendering of what has happened over the last few years with respect to this issue.
Then the Leader of the Official Opposition said individual members should not be judged on the basis of what they do or do not do, that it is up to them. He also said he would not want to be participating in any kind of group that judged other members of parliament with respect to the decisions that they make.