Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the member's comments and certainly would not argue with any of those criticisms of the bill and what the government is proposing to do with the program.
However I would like to remind the member that the chief actuary of the CPP, long before the government took action, had been a voice in the dark telling us that the CPP was not sustainable. For years private sector actuaries were saying the same thing.
In fact, during the years of the Mulroney Progressive Conservative government I wrote a letter to my member of Parliament, then a Progressive Conservative member of Parliament, pointing out those things to him and pleading for his government do something to make that plan actuarially sound for myself, my children and my grandchildren.
I would like to ask the member if the Progressive Conservative Party, when it was in government, examined the issue of the unsustainability of the Canada pension plan and, if it did, why did it not do something to fix it and to address the criticisms that he is making of the current government in the way it fixed the plan. Why did the Conservatives not do it right when they had the chance?