Mr. Chairman, I would like to rise in support of the amendment put forward by the House leader for the Progressive Conservative Party. I am at a bit of a disadvantage because we have not yet received the amendments and I understood that in fact my House leader would be putting forward a similar or identical amendment to delay the effect of the bill until after the next election, into the next parliament.
Let me just respond briefly to the hon. government House leader. First he suggests that to delay the effect of this bill until after the next election would be inconsistent with the recommendations of the independent Lumley commission. How disingenuous, coming from the very same government House leader who has ignored the recommendation in that report for the beginning point of April of this year for the effect of this legislation and has dialled this back so that it is retroactively covered as of January. Talking about an unprecedented way of doing legislation, to begin to impose pay increases retroactive to six months before the bill is even considered is highly unconventional.
I want to point to a very ancient rule of this place and, I think, of our mother parliament, which is that we as members ought to absent ourselves from voting on matters in which we have a direct pecuniary interest. I refer the Chair to Standing Order 21 which states:
No Member is entitled to vote upon any question in which he or she has a direct pecuniary interest, and the vote of any Member so interested will be disallowed.
This rule has been in place since Confederation. The government House leader will no doubt argue that it is trumped by the precedent whereby parliament does in fact, through the appropriation power, approve its own pay. However it does not have to be this way. We do not have to continue to put ourselves in this conflict of interest.
I refer the government House leader to the fact that several years ago the congress of the United States, finding itself in precisely the same sort of conflict of interest, managed to elicit sufficient support to pass a constitutional amendment requiring that any potential pay increases in the U.S. congress would not come into effect until following an election. Why? Precisely because it would take the congresspersons, and in our case parliamentarians, out of this untenable conflict of interest and would allow the voters, upon whom we impose taxes to pay for these salaries, to determine whether or not they are appropriate.
This amendment reflects the policy of my party. It ought not to be a partisan issue, though, and all members should see this as a elegant way in which we can extricate ourselves from this untenable conflict of interest in which we find ourselves in every parliament.
I have one last point. The government House leader says that this would become an issue in the next election or after the election. The point is this: I do not think a single member of the House campaigned on a 20% pay increase. I do not think a single member raised, in a piece of election literature or an election speech or a visit to a constituent, the notion that one of the priority pieces of the business of the House would be an increase in compensation for members of parliament. This was not considered by the public when they gave the House a mandate. If we delay this pay increase as this amendment would seek to do it would allow Canadians, the people who pay the bills, to make a final determination.
I believe that as sensible people Canadians will make the right decision. They will look at the independent commission and say that most of those recommendations are sensible. We can trust Canadians to make the right decision in an election and the next parliament to respect that decision.
I speak in favour of this amendment.
