Madam Speaker, I am extremely pleased to speak today to this important motion by my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. I am also pleased that he asked me to second it. Let us keep in mind that its purpose is to provide proper protection for one essential component of the economic safety net for the people of this country, or in other words to guarantee them a decent income when they retire.
Over the past seven or eight months, many people have learned that they will not be able to fulfill their expectations of early retirement because their planning had involved RRSPs, which are often invested in the stock exchange. Their investments have, in many cases, lost 40% of their value over the past year. That is a shock. We are not talking just of people who managed their own RRSPs, but also of people working for well established companies. My colleague from Ottawa Centre has just cited Nortel as an example. A classic example, and we could also mention Air Canada. Last week, I was talking to some Air Canada mechanics who are very concerned. They have 28, 29, 30 years of service and do not know if they will have enough money for their retirement when the time comes. This is a major concern.
So my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek has introduced a motion to accomplish a number of things. First of all, to expand and increase retirement pensions. A slight amendment will be proposed in order to fix a problem with one reference. This will ensure the support of our motion by the 49 colleagues of the Bloc Québécois. It also speaks of establishing a self-financing pension insurance program to ensure the viability of workplace sponsored plans in tough economic times. This is the cornerstone of the proposals we have before us. Proposals as my colleague has explained today, which would ensure that our pensions are guaranteed, somewhat along the lines of the Canadian government's deposit insurance that guarantees our bank deposits.
Let us look at some of the things the government is responsible for. For example, for certain things such as food inspection—since food often goes across borders—the federal government is responsible. As we have seen with certain essential issues, basic issues of public protection, the Conservative government has not grasped what the mandate of the state is. It is almost as if it had some objection to it. There are a number of similar examples that have cropped up in the last three years of the Conservatives' abandonment of the public. Here again, if no action is taken, people are once again going to be abandoned at a time of serious economic crisis.
I am reassured, though, by the fact that the Conservatives have proposed an amendment, which, as I interpret it, gives us reason to believe—because we will agree to it—that they will be supporting our motion.
The motion also contains a proposal that workers' pension funds have priority in the event of bankruptcy. It is not right that someone who built the company and gave it value should have to go to the end of the line when creditors are being ranked. A former worker has the same rank as someone on Wall Street who has a claim against the company that has sought bankruptcy and insolvency protection. We feel that this is unacceptable. This government, this country and this Parliament have to make it a priority to protect these people. Many people learn the hard way that their pension is not protected at all.
Lastly, there is one thing we also wanted to talk about today that is extremely disturbing, and that is the issue of the bonuses that the directors of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board paid themselves. It is incredible.
They came to see me in my office. I am the NDP finance critic, so it makes sense. People come and say what they have to say. It was before they announced that they had lost more than $23 billion, an astronomical amount. They came to see me, and it was pretty clear to me at that point that they were planning to pay themselves bonuses again this year, believe it or not, after losing $23 billion last year.
Their reasoning went something like this. We should not look at the $23 billion in taxpayers' money that they had just lost. Instead, we should look at it in terms of a four-year rolling average.
The only one not on a roll in this is the taxpayer. I told them that they have understood nothing if they do it this year. We are in an economic crisis. The public would not stand for it and Parliament would never permit it.
Interestingly, when we put our initial questions to the government on this, we got nowhere. It took two weeks of outrage. I remember the front page headline of the Toronto Star with pictures of the four principal directors and under that a description of the public outcry. It took all that for the Conservatives to begin to understand that people no longer put up with this sort of thing and that it was time for a change in attitude.
In the end, rather weakly, the Minister of Finance announced he had written the chair of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to demand that they analyze the projected bonuses in the light of the G20's position aimed at controlling inflation in terms of the bonuses business leaders were giving themselves.
Let us make no mistake. The monumental salaries paid in firms such as Goldman Sachs in London reflected the fact that these businesses were making money from nothing by taking positions on this and that. So people were paying themselves extraordinary bonuses until everything started to crumble. With a presumptuousness never before seen, they went hat in hand to taxpayers in order to fill up their coffers. The incredible part is that they actually managed to do so.
This, however, is a public institution managing in the public domain. We have nothing against them and do not want to deprive them of a salary, even a substantial one. These people, we have to realize, paid themselves bonuses of several million dollars again this year, despite their record losses, while they earn more than the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.
They are not poor. They are not mistreated. They are not being told that their houses and their cars are going to be seized. What they are being told is that they are already very well paid. A bonus should be something exceptional for an exceptional performance. This year with their losses, any bonus they got should have been a negative one. Something should have been taken away from them.
This is why we find it unacceptable that the government has done nothing yet. The letter from the Minister of Finance may produce nothing, but in the name of decency in public administration, they should have acted more quickly and more decisively. However, they hid behind other authorities and other institutions. They should have told them this was unacceptable and that they would not stand for it.
Just to further convince you, they persuaded themselves that the amount was not so bad over four years. However, over the same four-year period, their performance was lower than the basic rate of inflation in the economy. Over a similar period, had they bought Government of Canada savings bonds, they would have made an additional $13 billion. These people convinced themselves that they had set standards, benchmarks. They have a fine way of describing benchmarks
A Nobel prize winner in economy said that benchmarks were a cross between a Ponzi scheme and groupthink.
Some say they are not as bad as other people. That is pure bunk. This is why it is so important we all rise in this House to send a clear signal. If these people think they are so good as to deserve millions of dollars, they should have the decency to resign. Let them do us all a favour. Let them resign and see what they are worth in the private sector. I think they will get the shock of their life.