Mr. Speaker, I wonder if my colleague would agree with me that the plight of women pensioners living in poverty was exacerbated terribly when the former President of the Treasury Board used the entire surplus of the public service pension plan to pay down the debt and to give tax breaks to wealthier Canadians in the year 2000.
My colleague was not here then, but we remember it very well. Statistically, most of the public service pensioners are women and their average income is $9,000 per year, but when the Liberals froze the wages of public servants for seven years straight, the actuarial impact was to create a $30 billion surplus in the plan. Rather than saying that they would improve the plight of these people making $9,000 a year, largely women, and distribute it among the beneficiaries, they said, “Hey, we found $30 billion. Let us use it to give $100 billion worth of tax breaks to our wealthy friends and corporations”.
Would the hon. member agree with me that this mindset dramatically affected in a negative way the standard of living of some of Canada's poorest Canadians, the women who were in fact pensioners from Canada's public service, many of whom are in Ottawa, many of whom are living in my riding, and many of whom, I am sure, live in her own riding?
If I could just add to and qualify this, at the same time, Bell Canada had a pension plan surplus. Bell decided that it would take one-third for the company, have one-third for future use and give one-third to the beneficiaries of the plan. In fact, one-third was a credit, I suppose, a contribution holiday. Would the hon. member not agree that this would have been the humane and decent thing to do for the pensioners with the $30 billion surplus instead of the government taking it all and not one penny going to the beneficiaries of the plan?