Mr. Speaker, I have been asked about that, the question of a spouse or dependent and how they might be impacted by the bill. I have a couple of thoughts on it.
The first is that we should not treat ourselves in a manner that is terribly different than ordinary Canadians. For example, if someone goes to prison today and that person has a spouse, it is difficult for that family but it is something they do without support from the state. Similarly, in my riding, if someone, for example, defrauds a government program, they not only could go to jail but they also lose the funding of that program, say employment insurance as an example. We do not, as a government or a country, make special restitutions for those kinds of examples.
Therefore, I am a bit wary of proceeding on a path as they did in the other place, where members are ejected but continue to collect their benefits in a way that I think is a bit offside with Canadian taxpayers.
My solution is that, should a member find himself or herself in a situation where they were disqualified from their pension, under Bill C-518 the amount that had been contributed by the member would be returned to the member with interest. That is no small amount. We currently pay about $11,000 or $12,000 a year toward our pensions. That is going to rise to about $38,000 a year, starting after 2016. If we look at that amount over 6 or 10 years, we begin to approach a fairly healthy amount, between $300,000 and $500,000 approximately. Therefore, that addresses the hon. member's concerns to a degree.
Having said that, if that is an avenue that other members want to pursue, I would be open to hearing about it. However, again, I would not want to have a loophole that is too large here, because the point of the bill is to send the signal to people to not break the rules. If they do not break the rules, the pension will be there for them.