Bob Mills

[Supply, May 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the point has been made regarding this issue. We are hearing today the involvement in the House, the frustration of being in this place and trying to present an honest point of view from constituents; the total frustration I am sure the backbench on the government side and the opposition side have with representing what people stand for and what they tell us when no one is listening. That is what the electorate feels as well.

[Supply, May 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to delete Standing Order 78 from the Standing Orders.

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, May 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I would certainly hope the Canadian public has learned how to become involved in the process. I would go back to the last election and how they got involved and made a major change. The major change was a response to issues such as this one. They said: "Do not tell us what is good for us. We will tell you what we are prepared to have and to pay for".

I would tell Canadians to make sure they talk to their members of Parliament. They must talk to them, write to them, phone them, and tell them where they are coming from. They must do it soon. They must do it before the end of June so they will have input. When the bill gets to committee, I hope the government will deal with it in that way.

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, May 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize. This is an emotional issue. It is one we feel very strongly about. It is certainly one about which my constituents feel very strongly. If there is one issue that has been raised more times than any other in the four years I have been involved, it has to be the one of MPs' pensions.

I get emotional about it. It has been four or five years that I have been talking about it. It is not something new. It is not a matter of just jumping on the bandwagon and saying we oppose it, as two former members said we were doing. If they checked the record they would find that most of us feel strongly about the issue. Mr. Speaker, your constituents feel strongly about it as well.

We have to put the facts on the table. I respect what the hon. member just said about salaries. That is how it should have been presented. If it had been done that way it could have possibly received all-party agreement. If it had been simply presented as a trade-off and package, bounced off the people to find out if they agreed, there was a good chance they would have accepted it. However I am certain they will not accept this type of pension plan.

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, May 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, first, we are talking about pensions, not salaries. I will answer the hon. member's question about salary.

The Canadian public does not know what an MP does. I must admit that some of us who came here for the first time probably really did not know how much work was involved. If people knew the number of hours involved I think there would be support for higher salaries. In any business there would be some MPs who would not qualify but generally speaking MPs are underpaid.

A pay increase at least is honest. It is straightforward. If it is explained properly the Canadian public would understand that. They cannot understand a pension that MPs have rewarded to themselves that is totally different from other pensions. It is three and a half times better than you can get in industry.

Canadians cannot accept the dishonesty of that sort of a pension. What they could accept would be the honesty of saying: "These are the hours, this is the job that is done and this is the salary that should have been obtained".

You say you took a salary cut. I took a big salary cut too.

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, May 4th, 1995]

MPs were told to take the GST back to their constituents and tell them how well it would work and how it was best for them. Mr. Speaker, you saw what happened when MPs went back and told the people that the top down message was the way to go. The message was loud and clear. It is not us across here that are giving politicians a bad name.

It is one of many things that have happened. Take the example of gun control. Gun control is being dealt with as a message from on high. What do the people want? People want crime control. They are not asking for gun control.

I come now to pensions. What is being done with this pension? The people of Canada do not mind paying the salaries of those members of Parliament who do the job for them. I have not heard much complaint about the salaries. However, they expect the pension to be the same as they can get in industry. That is all they are asking. If that were the case, I do not think there would be a problem.

What I really think happened was that a number of senior members on the other side decided no, we are here, we have it, we are not going to give it up. They demonstrated like so many do that they are not prepared to make sacrifices for the country.

Why should Canadians make a sacrifice if the leaders will not? The people who were elected in 1993 are caught in this thing. They know what people are saying because they are still in touch with their constituents. That is some 200 plus of us.

I am sure it was felt that members on this side would be split on this item. We feel so strongly about it in the Reform Party that 52 of us are going to take that exemption and get out of the pension plan. That is a pretty big surprise to the governing party.

I bring members to what is going to happen in 1997-98. We are all standing on a stage at an all candidates forum. I think about the questions from that crowd. I think about them saying: "Okay, there is a candidate up there who has opted out of the gold plated pension that some 85 per cent of Canadians in a survey said must be eliminated. Someone has opted out. All of the rest cannot opt out even if they wanted to because their party said they had to belong to that gold plated pension plan".

It will be a pretty tough position for other candidates to defend. Throw in a bit of gun control. Throw in a few of the other major issues and it will be even more difficult. We know that governments defeat themselves. They are seldom defeated from the outside.

It is just amazing that something like this would be dealt with this way. I can hardly believe, with all the spin doctors and all the professional consultants that the other party has, it would even consider gambling with something like this gold plated pension unless a lot of members plan to opt in or opt out, however it is going to work. It is certainly going to be an Achilles' heel in the coming election.

The people will be able to speak. The people have shown that already. The people have power now. In case members have not noticed, they demonstrated it in 1992 with the Charlottetown accord. They demonstrated it in the election very strongly about the GST and the corrupt items that we talked about. They certainly demonstrated it to the cable television companies. Members better believe that they are going to display their power in 1997-98 or whenever the next election is. The battle cry is going to be gold plated pensions. I guarantee it will be at the top of the list.

This is the sort of issue that to me touches everybody. All people think about their health, their old age and protection and security for themselves and their families. This is something to which every one of them can relate.

When you get something that everybody can relate to, Mr. Speaker, you now have a very definite issue. Members of the Reform Party are not going to let voters forget about the pension plan. We might be talking about guns, we might be talking about other things but those issues do not touch everyone. When we have an issue like taxes, an issue like pensions that touches everyone, people will respond.

I suppose the purpose of this House is for us to point out to everyone here the issue, the problems and what the people of Canada are saying about an issue like this. I respectfully put forward this point of view and say this is an issue we must deal with.

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, May 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I maintain that the government is not listening. It is not listening on the young offenders, on crime control, on victims' rights. And it is not listening on pensions for the MPs.

We heard them, certainly in the dribble that was spewed out by the member for Winnipeg St. James. He talked about why politicians have such a low profile. He said that the people on this side are the ones that keep talking about it. That is not true. It is the people that are talking about it.

Ironically, a letter was delivered to me in the House just now from a constituent of mine. Parts of it might convey the message. It was sent as an open letter to the Prime Minister:

As one of your employers, I expect Canada to be managed by real leaders worthy of trust. In the 1993 election campaign you promised to restore integrity to government.

Where's the integrity in your MP pension reform, especially in light of your recent budget? You promised to reform pensions, then made only minor changes that don't come close to bringing MP pensions into line with pensions like mine. I have to save for my retirement and can't even depend on Canada Pension Plan any more, yet politicians get pensions that I pay for. Worse yet, many of your cabinet colleagues and long-sitting MPs manage to get away with no changes whatsoever to their original pensions.

I think that says an awful lot.

If we must expect less, shouldn't our leaders also expect less? You promised integrity, but we see business as usual. Patronage continues, spending is out of control, and promised reforms and action plans have only meant discussion papers or empty words.

That is from someone at that grassroots level and it explains why people do not trust politicians. Let us look at other reasons they do not trust politicians. We have all read the books On the Take and Beyond the Law . We read that stuff and we see what kinds of things have happened in this place.

In the Hill Times the chairman of the committee I am on, the member for Rosemont, although he is misquoted a little, says that the joint foreign affairs committee had an $800,000 budget. He said: ``Most committee chairs overestimate their budgets for the year. You do not know how much you need so you pad everything like mad''. That is what people are seeing. That is why people are asking questions and that is why politicians get a bad name.

We are talking about savings and pensions for people. One of the biggest problems Canada has is that its people have about 7 per cent savings to the GDP. Countries like Chile have 25 per cent. Many of the countries in the Orient have savings higher than that. That is what provides stability for a country. People see politicians not taking care of those kinds of things. We should be encouraging people to save through RRSPs to build that savings level, so that money is invested in Canadians.

The GST is a good example of what we are talking about now. A party decided the GST was good for people. You MPs that were here then should take that home-

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, May 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to talk about glaciers. I do not intend to talk about all of the aspects of C-85 either.

I heard a number of comments prior to question period, particularly from the member for St. Boniface, which I believe have to be answered. Accusations were made that many of us on this side of the House ran for some fairly questionable reasons. We have heard that a lot of times. Maybe we should just go back and review very quickly why most of us on this side of the House ran and I am sure on that side of the House also ran.

Certainly we were concerned about the debt and deficit. It is only fair to say that when we looked back at 1984 we thought that a change had to be made. We were at $180 billion. We had someone who promised he would take care of it. By 1988 he did take care of it. We were at $375 billion, and we were told it was still a problem. By the time we got to 1993 we were at $489 billion and then we really knew we did have a big problem.

An awful lot of us got involved back in that 1988 period because we saw not only this debt and deficit, but we saw corruption, mismanagement, waste, and a government that was not listening to the people. We saw that by not listening it meant that a message would come down from on high and go back to the riding and we would be told what was good for us from the party.

The message was always going the wrong way, and the people desperately wanted to be heard. What they wanted to be heard was that they wanted to end so many of those things. They wanted to end the perks and the gold plated pension plan, which became a battle cry for citizens out there who were looking at that and asking what it meant.

They also were fighting the arrogance this place had. I would say that a lot has improved here, but certainly what we saw in question period today was not an improvement. We had a question answered in another language and everyone was laughing and cheering about it. That is arrogance and disrespect for this place. If that sort of thing continues the people will speak again. We can count on that.

We have problems in this country. The debt and deficit of course are getting worse. We have a criminal justice system that is in decay. The people are demanding change. They are asking about young offenders, parole, victims' rights, the time taken by the courts, the crime and the law and order out there. They are asking what the government is doing and if it is listening.

Instead, the government is fooling around with things like gun control and its own selfish, greedy pensions. That is what the government is wasting time on in this House. The public is listening and evaluating what this House is doing on that matter. They demand parliamentary reforms. They demand that we do something about that other place over there, that waste of money and time that we have. They demand that they are able to recall and fire an MP who does not do his job. They demand that they can talk on social issues and that we bring them back to them and speak for them. They demand in fact that people have the right in this place to have free votes. They demand that if they tell their member to vote against something a party whip should not be able to whip him into shape so that he has to go along with party lines or lose his committee position and position in this place because they go against the party, the almighty party from Ottawa that tells you what you have to do when you get home.

The government is not listening.

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, May 4th, 1995]

How about Alberta? It is zero.

[Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, May 1st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the invention of the nuclear bomb and its first use on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as we have mentioned.

These weapons created a new horror for humanity, the scope of which we have never known before. Upon witnessing the detonation of the first nuclear test explosion, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan project, in his shock and amazement at the devastation quoted an ancient Hindu scripture that read "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds".

It was true that for the first time in history man could destroy the earth, and nothing has been the same since. Not only did the atomic bomb magnify the horror of war, but it changed it fundamentally.

Throughout the centuries, civilian populations were largely left beyond the battlefield. At the very least, a conqueror or destroyer would be forced to fight its way through a country's defences before they could do significant harm to civilians. In other words, there was always a defence and hope.

With the creation of nuclear weapons, two things changed. First, civilians were no longer unintended victims; they were the primary targets, and they could be incinerated by the millions. Second, no matter how strong the country's defences were or how tough its army was it was still completely vulnerable to nuclear destruction.

Responding to the threat that nuclear weapons would spread across the world, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the NPT, was negotiated in 1970 and has been strongly supported by Canada ever since.

As the Minister of Foreign Affairs has already described its key features and advantages, I will not repeat them. However, I will say that the Reform Party will give 100 per cent support to the government in its efforts to negotiate an indefinite and unconditional extension of the NPT.

For the future of our citizens and all the people of the world Canada must be a leading voice in the UN, calling for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. No good can come from such weapons of mass destruction, and their ownership should be negotiated away by all governments in good conscience.

The Reform Party sincerely hopes that the NPT can be renewed indefinitely; however, if certain countries withdraw or fail to sign on we believe the government should take into consideration whatever action it can use to promote bilateral action against those countries.

The time has come for the world to take a few large and rapid steps away from nuclear annihilation. The end of the cold war has made this possible, and now the unconditional and indefinite renewal of the NPT is the next logical step. For our collective future we must not fail in this task.