Madam Speaker, the hon. member ended on rather a sour note which I am surprised at since all the provinces support it as well as management investment pension board representatives.
There were three areas he mentioned. One was the independence of the board which I have talked about before, which is beyond reproach. There is discussion about the arm's length of the board. It is clearly able to invest in any sectors that it wishes. In fact that again is very clear. It has the full authority to develop a plan and it does.
How is the plan working? It is working rather well. In comparison to others, OMERS as of December 2001 annual returns for selected public sector pension funds was minus 3.4%. Ontario teachers was minus 2.4%. The caisse populaire was minus 5%. CPP was plus 6.2%. That is not a bad record.
The member pointed out the foreign property rule. I point out to the hon. member that foreign property rule strikes a balance to investing in Canada and elsewhere. We have seen some increases in this over the years from the 10% limit of 1971 that has gradually moved forward to the 30% limit of January 2001.
Finally, I personally find offensive to suggest this is a tax grab. First of all, the money will not go into general revenue, it will go into a separate account toward people's pensions, which is what we are all in favour of here, and not to government coffers. The short term economic impact of the increase in CPP has been well known for a long time.
The opposition cannot have it both ways. On the one hand it says we are not properly funding it and therefore the thing will run out and we have done a lousy job. On the other hand we recognized this with our provincial partners and we fixed the problem with the support of the provinces. The opposition now turns around and says the rates are too high. Sometimes in politics it is better to be a listener than a talker and I wish some of the members on the other side would listen to what this legislation says.
Could the member explain to us, if all the provinces and the federal government support this legislation and support the changes, and people in the pension fund management sector support it, how is it that they are all wrong and he is right?