Mr. Speaker, I have a quick comment about the concept of changing the rules of the game.
I was approached by a gentleman in my constituency who would be in his early seventies and who retired from a coal mine also in my constituency. In good faith, he had paid into a pension plan, as had the company. Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt, and due to a number of different issues it turned out that the pension plan ended up being completely underfunded. Now that was not very fair. Here is a gentleman who was enjoying a modest income who suddenly dropped down to about $100 a month in his pension, where he had in good faith during his working life paid into that. It was absolutely and totally outside of his control.
I raise that as a point of interest to the member. Very frequently we have seen politicians who have said this is out of our control, or the people retired previously, so it must be fair, and so on and so forth. Well doggone it, unfortunately, in Canada, as everywhere in the world, there are an awful lot of things that happen that are unfair. So to just dismiss the idea of not looking at those who have retired and not asking if there is some fair and equitable way to put an end to the countless millions of dollars that are being paid out to them and in a fair way to reimburse them and then let them get on with their lives so that Canadian people can get on with their lives, maybe that is something that should be looked at.
I would be interested to know what, in his former life, the member did for a living. Listening to him, I assume that he must have been a professor of very dry subjects or a lawyer or somebody who loves to use 75-cent words all strung out in a long row when talking about the double dipping and all the issues involved in the legislation.
This act that is being brought forward by the government is attempting to cover every single, solitary eventuality. In fact, I believe that what the people in Canada are saying is they do not think politicians should be able to put themselves in some kind of unique category and unique classification.
Would he not agree that the people of Canada would accept, instead of a three to one or a four to one or a five to one payment on their part to what the politicians are going to be putting in, the idea of an industry standard of one for one? If the politician puts in $5 the people of Canada put in $5, instead of the politician putting in $5 and the people of Canada having to cough up $20, which is what this legislation still calls for.
Would he not agree that it would be the simplest thing in the world to wipe out what is presently in existence relative to the pension plans and come back with a program that would say that the politicians may, for every $1 they put in, up to a particular limit, be matched by $1 from the taxpayer? Then we do not need
to worry about double dipping, triple dipping, or any other kind of ice cream dipping. It does not make any difference, because in fact then the person would be in charge of their own destiny and would be out of the pockets of ordinary Canadians.
