Mr. Speaker, on June 27, 1788, the Virginia ratifying convention proposed a series of amendments to the draft federal constitution then before that body. It was understood by all participants in the debate over whether to ratify the proposed new constitution of the United States that if Virginia did not sign on, the new constitution would be stillborn.
The Virginia delegates made it clear that their ratification was conditional upon the adoption of the larger portion of the 20 proposed changes to the body of the constitution they had set forth. These amendments dealt with freedom of speech, the independence of the judiciary, freedom of religion, the right to own property, and other key rights.
One of the amendments, which is relevant to today's debate read as follows. It resolved:
That the laws ascertaining the compensation to Senators and Representatives for their services be postponed in their operation, until after the election of Representatives immediately succeeding the passing thereof—
This proposed amendment was the intellectual origin and the genesis of the primary principle underlying my decision to vote against the legislation before us.
The list of proposed amendments was taken to the first session of the United States' congress by one of Virginia's greatest sons, James Madison. From it and similar lists forwarded by the ratifying conventions of the other states, Madison and his colleagues cobbled together a series of 12 amendments which, on September 25, 1789, were duly enacted by a two-thirds majority of each of the two houses of congress and sent to the states for ratification.
At this point the wording had been somewhat altered to read thus:
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
Unlike all but one of the other amendments approved that day, the amendment on congressional pay was not immediately adopted by a three-fourths majority of the 13 states. Perhaps this was because legislators in those days were modest in their salary demands and there was no need to place controls on their ability to set their own levels of compensation.
Times change. The willingness of elected representatives to compensate themselves generously grew to the point that by the 1980s a Texas legislative aide, Gregory Watson, felt compelled to take up the cause. He built a cross-country coalition that convinced the legislatures of 32 states to complete the ratification process. With the simultaneous ratification on May 7, 1992, of the Michigan and New Jersey state legislatures, Madison's proposal became the 27th amendment to the United States' constitution.
I have engaged in this long historical digression to make as pointed a contrast as possible between the right way of reforming parliamentary compensation and the mess that presents itself to us today.
Following the 2000 election, a commission, headed by former cabinet minister Ed Lumley, prepared a series of recommendations on MP salaries and compensation. Its report was made public last week. Some of its proposals strike me as excellent, particularly those which would moderate the accrual rate for the MP pension plan and which call for openness in reporting MPs' incomes.
I had not known until last week that my total compensation package under the existing byzantine structure of salary and tax free allowances added up to $109,000 per year.
Other aspects of the Lumley report, such as the proposal to tie MPs' salaries to those of judges, strikes me as less satisfactory. A linkage to private sector compensation would in my mind have been preferable.
However, the Lumley report is not the problem. It is an impartial public servant's attempt to come to a reasonable solution to the question of MP compensation. What has been distressing beyond all measure has been the government's reaction to the report.
In the past week we have seen the government fiddle with the accrual rate of the MP pension plan. According to Walter Robinson of the National Taxpayers Association, it has done so to goose up the size of payouts by as much as 42%, make the pay retroactive to a point far in advance of the date suggested by Mr. Lumley, and insert an odious and offensive opt out clause to allow it to tar any member who votes against the bill with the spurious charge of hypocrisy.
Each of these actions is an offence but the last one is so bad that I urge every member of the House, regardless of his or her intentions with regard to opting in or opting out, to vote against the entire bill on this basis alone.
The worst part of the government's reaction to the Lumley report has surely been its unseemly haste to ram the legislation through in record time.
So great was the government's haste that time allocation was imposed on the debate in the House. The committee of the whole that met yesterday had only a few hours to discuss the details of the bill. Each of us was permitted to raise questions only once, thereby preventing the kind of two way exchange that might have shed more light on important details of Bill C-28.
So great was the government's haste that its translation of the bill from English to French contained numerous mistakes which had to be corrected by amendments in committee.
So great was the government's haste that at committee stage it failed to group consequential amendments to the bill as is the normal practice.
Finally, the government's haste was so great that many members, myself included, were unable to flip through our sheaves of proposed amendments before the votes had been commenced on them. We therefore voted in complete ignorance or had to abstain from voting so as not to vote inappropriately.
All of this does the government a great discredit.
I will say for the record that there are many members in the House who deserve the increase on which we will be voting this afternoon. There are some for whom the services to their country that they are providing here, that they have provided here and that in many cases they will continue to provide here, far outweigh any level of compensation they will see.
For that reason I would never condemn a fellow member regardless of how he or she chooses to vote, whether he or she chooses to opt into the pension plan, the pay raise or the whole package, but I cannot and will not set aside any kind word for the process by which the raise is being rammed through. It is wrong and I will be voting against it.
I urge every fellow member of the House to do the same, regardless of party affiliation and regardless of his or her intentions with respect to the pay raise.