I think we are finding some unity in the House. I am not sure that it is what I was attempting to do, but if that is what happens, we could use some unity around here.
The fact is that what we are really worried about is the tenor that is being set in this country as employers see what is happening here.
We all know about the fights going on to save pensions and to save defined benefits. We are losing that battle. It breaks my heart to say it. I believe that there are a lot of working people and working families out there who are moving from defined benefit to defined contribution plans, and their dignity in retirement is predicated on whether they are good at stock market management and guessing.
How many people here did not feel the pain of seniors when the tech bubble burst in 2000? Those people were 69 years old, and by law, they had to convert their RRSPs. They were forced to turn them into annuities, and those annuities were worth about half of what they were just six months before. Why did those people lose half their income for retirement? What is the answer? There is none. There is none as long as the stock market decides.
We are so much better off as a country when we have defined benefits. Yes, leave it to the corporations. They can hire the best advisors and all the best brokers and analysts, who, by the way, do not get it right. How can Canadians be expected to guarantee that they will have $1 million or three-quarters of a million dollars in their portfolios, when people who make half a million dollars a year doing it get it wrong? That is not right.
Our worry on this issue is that working people in this country are going to lose a little more ground. We will not see it in a few weeks or a few months and probably not even in a few years. However, in five, 10, 15, or 20 years, as people begin to retire, particularly the younger boomers, who were affected by the switch from defined benefits to defined contributions, and begin to cash in their RRSPs when they are close to 70 years old, they will find out that even though they worked longer, maybe 50 years, the dignity they thought they should have in retirement, that they could have had, that they are entitled to, is not there, because the stock market crashed at a bad time for them.
Who do they blame? Where do they take that anger? Where do they take the fact that they cannot have the standard of living they are entitled to as retirees? Where do they go? Because there is no answer to where they can go, the best we can do is make sure that we are here, in the people's place, taking on these fights as best we can and start turning things around so that people have hope for the future, not despair. They can think that maybe there is a government that is on their side or is at the very least not their enemy.
We can do so much better as a country in terms of the approach we are taking towards public service, towards our public institutions, and certainly towards those Canadians who work in those public institutions.
I am proud to be here tonight. I am proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with every one of my NDP colleagues as we take on the government and this bad, vicious legislation.