Mr. Speaker, as we have heard a few times this afternoon, here we go again. For those of us who have been here for more than one term, we have had this discussion before, and it has a ring of familiarity. I guess I am reminded of the statement by J.K. Chesteron that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. That is what seems to have happened with this issue.
In 2001 the government brought in Bill C-28. It said that it would solve this situation once and for all. We had a discussion on this issue. The government came forward with legislation that would tie the salaries of MPs to those of the judges, as has been said this afternoon.
I guess the government did not plan at the time that the commission, which reviews the salaries of judges, would come back with a recommendation that those salaries be raised somewhere between 11% and 16%. We heard the minister this afternoon say that it was closer to 16% than 11%. The government did not figured that into the equation.
I appreciated what my Bloc colleague had to say earlier. He said that when the Prime Minister heard the news that had been leaked to the media, he overreacted and said that he would separate himself from anything to do with it. He was one of the people who brought forth the legislation in the first place. We are back again today.
When Bill C-28 came out in 2001, the government was enthusiastic about it. The minister of state and leader of the government in the House at the time, the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, issued a press release. It stated, “This bill implements the recommendations made in the report of the independent Commission...The bill makes parliamentary compensation more transparent”, which is ironic given what we have run into over the last couple of months in trying to deal this issue, “and brings it more into line with compensation for comparable groups.” He concluded by saying, “It is a fair and reasonable approach to parliamentary compensation and I invite all parliamentarians to support it”. It was supported, but it turned out that it was not a fair and reasonable package and approach to this situation. We are back dealing with it again.
In the House the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell said:
--parliamentary compensation would be based from here on in on the compensation of the supreme court chief justice. This is not a new idea. Officers of parliament, such as the information commissioner and the chief electoral officer, already receive the same compensation as a federal court judge, so the precedent is there for officers of the House. What we are proposing here is to do the same for parliamentarians.
He went on say that under Bill C-28 the prime minister would receive the same compensation as the chief justice of the Supreme Court, not $1 more. I do not see him here today to defend the previous bill, which he was once so enthusiastic about.
I would like to ask my colleague a question. We have now switched the system for indexing parliamentarians' wages from tying it to the Supreme Court chief justice to using a different system. Rather than tie it to the chief justice of the Supreme Court, it will be tied to the index of the average percentage increase in base rate wages for the calendar year resulting from major settlements negotiated with bargaining units of 500 or more employees in the private sector of Canada.
Does he feel the government is competent enough that we will not be back again dealing with the issue in light of the fact that those settlements may at some point in the future be too extreme for the government to deal with as well? Is he comfortable with the government's approach now? Does he think this is a fair and reasonable way to do it?