Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for her intervention and I also want to thank my colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore for bringing this motion forward. I think it is fitting that in Veterans' Week we are having a day-long debate in the House of Commons about our veterans, who paid the ultimate sacrifice by going to two world wars, the Korean war and numerous peacekeeping missions around the world. And now we have veterans already returning from our war effort in Afghanistan.
I am so proud of and grateful for our veterans. Our ability to live our free lifestyle, to have the standard of living that we do and not to be under the thumb of anarchy and oppressed like some in the world is largely due to the huge sacrifice and effort made by our veterans.
There are a lot of parts of the motion that I can support and that I think the government can support, but the one thing that does present a real concern to me is messing around with the Canadian Forces superannuation fund.
I have talked to a lot of veterans in my riding. I have 17 legion branches and a couple of army, air force and navy veterans associations as well. I have spoken to them. They often hear that they are getting shortchanged when their annuities transfer over when the CPP benefit starts getting paid out at age 65.
The way the plan was originally envisioned and developed back in 1966, it took into consideration that CPP was a reality and that all Canadians, including civil servants and people who served in the armed forces, the RCMP and other government jobs, would receive CPP benefits and that the annuity would then adjust accordingly, so that the overall dollars they received, early retirement versus after age 65, would not change. It would be the exact same dollar figure.
I am concerned that if we move forward with some of the suggestions here they would actually increase the cost, and not just to government. My concern is that it is going to increase the cost of the premiums to the people currently involved in the plan. That is going to have a great impact on today's soldiers. I want to know why those members would want to off-load this cost onto today's soldiers.