Mr. Speaker, I am pleased the member brought this issue up. I want to address some of the misrepresentations that she made in her speech about promises made. These promises have been kept and I will talk about them right now.
The first is the pay raise. The member knows that we had to wait because the pay raise had to be compatible with the public service. Normally, this process is completed by the end of the fiscal year and a pay raise is announced in April or June. However, the public service collective agreement was not ratified until January. Since that happened , we have ensured that our men and women in uniform will receive a pay that will be fair, equitable and, more important, retroactive.
I am pleased to announce that our members of the forces will receive that pay raise this month. I also am pleased to announce, in response to the member's query, that this pay raise will be made retroactive to April 2004. This significant pay raise is 6.6% for non-commissioned members and 3.3% for officers of the rank of lieutenant colonel and below. It will have a direct effect on their lives.
On the issue of the Ontario health premium tax and its effect on the Canadian Forces, I am glad the member brought this up also. She knows full well that the management of health care resides in the hands of the provinces. An exception, however, is Canadian Forces members.
In May 2004 the province of Ontario introduced this tax. The government immediately contacted the province to determine if Canadian Forces members would be exempt from paying the Ontario health premium, given that the Canada Health Act precludes our military members from accessing those services.
We received the following response, that this was a tax instrument which applied to all residents of Ontario. We are working on trying change this. As the member alludes to, and personally I would agree, we have to change it. I know the Minister of National Defence has approached the ministry of health. He has spoken to the health minister to try to reverse this charge for our Canadian Forces members.
In the meantime, we factored the tax for our Ontario members in something called a post-living differential. That basically is a cost of living allowance. If our members who live on Ontario bases receive a higher cost of living as compared to those in other parts of the country, their post living differential will be increased.
We have tried to accommodate and ensure that our CF members are not hurt financially. I think the member has to agree that the pay raises our members have received this year are generous and fair. They are in response to the deep and profound debt of gratitude that all of us here have to our Canadian Forces members and their families for their services day in and day out to our country.