Mr. Speaker, the government is very clearly going after any person hired after January 1, 2013. That person will not have the same pension benefits as the people who are currently in the public service. In addition to that, they will face penalties if they retire with 30 years of service but are not of age 65.
That is simply not acceptable. We all know that once they put in 30 or 35 years of service, there is a time when they feel compelled to leave that line of work and retire. That is no longer possible. It is regrettable because, quite literally, people do wear out and need to take retirement.
What concerns me the most is the approach of the government. What it has done is to pit one group of people against another. It does it all the time, but in this instance it is appealing to the basest instincts of people, who do not understand that our job here is not to cut down those who have a decent, secure retirement but to raise up the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who do not. That is what the government should be doing instead of taking pot shots at people who help us run this country.