Mr. Speaker, it is simply an attempt to play politics with the issue of salary increases for parliamentarians. The committee had suggested a much higher salary increase. In order to look good to the public, if parliamentarians were in the same boat as judges, in terms of salary, then they could say it was common knowledge and that was how things worked.
However, when the independent commission suggested a larger salary increase, the Liberal government of the time panicked and said it was outrageous, that the salary increases were too big and that people would complain. Nonetheless, the commission made its decision and we no longer vote on our own salary increases. We leave it up to this neutral, independent and credible agency. Because it is panicking, the government is now saying that this will be all right for judges, but that it is outrageous for parliamentarians.
The Bloc Québécois is sticking to what it said in 2004. Those who are watching us could conclude that apparently only the Bloc is against this bill. We are against it because we want to be consistent with the position we took at the time.
In 2004, we maintained that what the government wanted to do was outrageous. We were opposed to it since it was not a matter of supporting a salary increase for judges because the government had gone ahead with this reform. We are simply being consistent with what we said then. We said we would react this way when they introduced the bill on increasing judges' salaries. We expected the Conservative government to change its mind and not behave like its Liberal predecessor. However, it is behaving exactly the same way—