Mr. Speaker, first I want to put some context into the debate on Bill C-30 and the compensation for members of Parliament.
As I recall, during the debate a couple of years ago, when the government was intent upon linking the salaries of members of Parliament to judges, I was opposed to that. I felt that what a judge did, in or out of a courtroom, had absolutely nothing to do with the job of a member of Parliament. In fact, there is arguably nothing similar about the two jobs.
Therefore at that time I felt there was no defensible argument for linking the salaries of members of Parliament to the salaries of judges. However I did believe that any linkage at all that removed from the House of Commons the ability to set its own remuneration was a step in the right direction. In other words, it was better than the status quo.
I believe that Bill C-30 is a step in the right direction. Now we can argue all along that the government should have brought this forward a couple of years ago. It should have done it then to link the members of Parliament to the similar average wage increase index that affects people out in the real world, in the private sector, and the increase in salary that they have to face.
This issue came to a head last spring when it leaked out that the commission, which sets the increase for the judges, appeared to be on the verge of setting a 10% or 11% increase in one year for judges and that same increase would have applied to members of Parliament. It is not defensible for us to go back to our ridings and say that we deserve a 10% or 11% increase in our salary when our constituents are getting maybe 1% at best.
I give that framework as a bit of background. I wonder why it is, never mind that the government made the mistake of linking it to judges to begin with, that we would not all be supportive of linking it to the same salary increase that the real world faces every day.