Madam Speaker, the member we just heard from if a member of the ruling Liberal Party, and I emphasize the word ruling. It underlines how out of touch these people are. Here is a dispute and their solution is, “Oh, that is easy. We will solve it. We will just take it all”. That is so one-sided, so lopsided.
With respect to the motions brought by our Bloc colleagues saying that those who stood up and voted to limit debate should forgo their right to debate, make a lot of sense. The Liberals use their majority to limit debate and then they use up the time for those of us who want to talk about these things and try to represent some common sense and fairness here.
I attribute that desire to all members on this side, the united alternative on this side. We are the alternative to that arrogant controlling government that says “Unless we control it and do it our way, it cannot possibly be right”. That is a terrible false assumption. It cannot be true.
I want to talk a bit about the amendments which are proposed in this group because they have to do with the actuarial evaluation. What the Liberal government is missing entirely is the unfairness of what it is doing. The Liberals get up, they crow and puff up their chests like colourful peacocks trying to attract mates and they say that they just cannot do anything wrong, that they are guaranteeing these pensions so the people have no complaint. That may be true. However, they fail to recognize what a surplus means. It means that the amount of money paid in over the last 10, 15, 20, 40 or however many years since a person has been an employee was too high. Moneys are put in by the employer, which is the taxpayer, and the employee, the person in the plan. In other words, they have taken more money from them than they should have to sustain the plan. That is totally obvious. If it were not the case, there would not be a surplus. To whom does that money belong?
We have all of these different questions being asked. Some say 20%, some say 30%. I suppose what we should do is think about things like the MP pension plan to which the taxpayer contributes about 80%. The employees are the members of parliament and the senators. When given the opportunity in the last parliament, all but one Reformer opted out of the plan because we said that it was just not right. This bill also addresses the plan for members of parliament.
I do not have the numbers at my fingertips and I suppose that I should if I am going to talk about this. However, if we look at all of the money in this so-called fund, my conjecture is that the MP pension plan has already taken the total sum down. Ordinary civil servants and other members of the so-called ordinary working class have paid in more than they should have to compensate for the members of parliament who are in this plan. I am not sure that it is all in the same fund and whether it is accounted for that way, so I need to be a little careful, but certainly in terms of the taxpayers' interests in the matter that would be the case.
We have a situation where we need to answer, before we get into any of this, a fundamental question. Who should pay for the livelihood of a person who has gone into retirement? That is the fundamental question which has never been answered.
Over the years we have had different plans. I remember when I was a little itty-bitty kid. That was a long time ago. Members will not believe it but I turned 60 this week, so when I say “when I was a little itty-bitty kid”, it was a long time ago. I remember my grandfather skimping and saving to put money into a retirement fund. He said: “Mom and I will not always have the ability to work and earn money, so we had better put some away so we can look after ourselves”.
It is ironic that when he finally did retire the Liberal government at the time brought in a pension plan which had some rules. It turned out that my grandfather was ineligible because he had made the mistake of not spending his own money. He had saved too much. As a result, he was not eligible for the supplemental benefits the government was offering. His looking after himself turned out to be a disadvantage. He would have been better off to have spent more money on his family, on himself and his wife.
That was a case where a person put money away. Many Canadians have a mixture. Probably all of us in this place have RRSPs, in addition to a pension plan in which we participate. I am one of those who at this stage has only an RRSP, but I do anticipate getting a small pension from the place where I worked when I finally retire. I am not getting that pension now, even though I would be eligible for it, but sometime in the future when my job here is done, 20 or 30 years from now, I expect to get some money from that. It represents money that I put in, but also money that my employer put in. I hope that money will be there, according to the contract.
The Liberals regularly say that the people who are in the plan will get their money. That is not the question. Of course they will get their money, but the Liberals like to talk about it because it totally deflects from the question of the surplus. The surplus exists because the people have paid too much.
I gave a speech a long time ago on a bill that came from the Senate which had to do with winding down pension plans and dealing with surpluses in pension plans in the private sector. It was a bill in which even our Minister of Finance had a fiduciary interest. Indirectly he has divested himself of these interests, temporarily, while he is a cabinet minister. I believe he must have done that. However, in the end that legislation will affect him because the shares in the company continue to grow and there was a surplus of over $110 million in the pension fund of his own company.
We were forced in this place to pass legislation that affected him, which said that an agreement would have to be reached between the two parties that paid into the fund, the employer and the employees. Quite clearly that is not bad legislation because if the employer said it wanted 100% of it the employees and the retirees would not agree and it would not happen. The employer would not get 100%. If the employees said that they wanted 100%, the employer would say no and there would be no agreement.
Clearly they would move to the middle. We, on the assumption that they would reach a deal somewhere around 50:50, said that the Minister of Finance had the potential of gaining $50 million from that legislation. We raised a little stink about it. We said that the Minister of Finance should not have sponsored the legislation in the House since he could potentially benefit from it.
That is no different from the issue we have here. We are talking about pension money that is set aside to pay the pensions of civil servants, people in the armed forces and the RCMP. I will accept from government members that people will get the pension they are anticipating because it is a defined benefit. Sure, they will get it, but what about the fact that both the taxpayers, the government as the employer, and the employees have paid too much into it and we have this $30 billion?
I outright reject the government's move to say that is all right, it will just take all of it. All of the money does not belong to it. It is not all taxpayer money. I concede that some of it is. The proportion has to be worked out. That can be done by actuaries very accurately.
Why do we not do that? Why do we not tell these people that we will give them back funds, either through enhanced benefits, reduced premiums or contributions? We will compensate contributors by the amount they have overpaid, and the part the taxpayers have given up. Sure, take that back and apply it to something that the taxpayers will benefit from. Let us be fair. That is what is missing.
Of course the government has invoked time allocation because, as any bank robber would say, “I ain't going to stick around until I get caught”.
