Rob Anders

[Ethics, November 1st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the government's ethics package is about as weak as a kitten. The package has taken nine years to come together and it is still almost toothless.

The Prime Minister chooses the ethics commissioner. The draft has loopholes big enough to drive a truck through and cabinet ministers, the source of most of the problems, are treated with kid gloves.

The Canadian people want transparency from government. The ethics package keeps cabinet business behind the closed doors of the PMO. When will the government bring forward legislation which will treat backbench MPs and cabinet ministers equally?

[National Defence, October 29th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, there will always be a debate over where taxpayer money is best spent. That said, it has become obvious to me, my colleagues on this side of the House and now even members of the government's own benches that the Canadian Forces need more money. Everyone but the Prime Minister agrees.

It is that simple message which was reinforced today at a press conference by Corrie Adolph, president of Canadians for Military Preparedness. She heads a grassroots organization of regular Canadians fighting for increased funding for our troops. Their goal is to change government policy by informing Canadians about the issues and by explaining how the problems facing the military affect us all.

They have started a petition calling for increased funding to the military, with a goal of one million signatories. Canadians will sign this petition because the government is putting our troops in danger. The government is letting down our allies and is putting the safety of ordinary Canadians at risk.

[National Defence, October 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is embarrassing when he gets the facts wrong so often. The minister used to be a banker so he should know about long lines, but this situation is getting ridiculous. Our pilots are waiting years just to get the training they need. Canada's old training program produced 64 graduates a year. The new program has not been able to match that in the last two years.

How will training be increased when the government actually has fewer pilots, fewer planes and puts in less money?

[National Defence, October 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, our military does not have enough money and it does not have enough trained pilots. So what does the government do? It pays money not to train pilots, with $65 million of taxpayer money that has gone into the pockets of Bombardier for our pilots to sit on the ground, and the situation is only getting worse. To top it off, we are the only country not filling all of our flying times.

Why has the government paid money for a service we have not received?

[Canada Pension Plan, June 21st, 2002]

Madam Speaker, there was an agreement today that the Alliance would be able to have a speaker up on the bill. I am that speaker. That was the agreement among the House leaders. I have duly, as a member of parliament, moved an amendment to that particular bill. That is all perfectly legitimate. There is nothing untoward about that. We have a prerogative to do that as members of parliament.

Madam Speaker, you have duly accepted it. I respect that. If the government House leader does not like it, that is something he will have to deal with. Nonetheless, I am the sole speaker that we wanted to have up today. I have done my duty. I could go on and speak at length to the bill, but--

[Canada Pension Plan, June 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to make this quick because I realize everyone wants to go home.

There is a requirement under section 115 of the Canada Pension Plan act that when a bill is introduced in parliament that alters the Canada Pension Plan act it is to be accompanied by a report from the Chief Actuary of Canada. The reason is to provide members with necessary information to consider the changes.

However, the law has a flaw, or perhaps I could describe it as a loophole, that gives the minister the excuse to proceed with the bill without the report and that is exactly what happened with Bill C-58. We had to consider Bill C-58 at second reading without the report and that impeded members' ability to be effective legislators. The report was tabled 11 days after its introduction. This type of delay is frankly unacceptable. Therefore, I move:

That the motion be amended by replacing all the words after the word “that” with:

this House declines to give second reading to Bill C-58, an act to amend the Canada Pension Plan and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act, since the bill fails to address the current situation whereby changes to the Canada Pension Plan act can be considered by this House before the required report of the Chief Actuary of Canada is tabled, a situation that diminishes the ability of the House to competently perform its legislative role.

[Petitions, June 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, like the two previous members I am presenting a petition on behalf of citizens who are concerned and sickened about child pornography provisions in the country.

What I am very surprised by is that the two previous members introducing these petitions were government members, and they were voting with the government and being tolerant with regard to these various provisions that allowed John Robin Sharpe and others to possess and hold this material. That is what upsets me, but I present this petition in the constituents' names.

[Government Contracts, June 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I hold in my hand the last question. We have asked many times and have been rebuffed, refused, ridiculed and rejected. Still, Canadians demand answers. So I ask again for government concurrence with the Canadian Alliance call for a corruption cleanup, a full, independent, public, judicial inquiry now.

[Canada Pension Plan, June 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about ethical screening. He also talked about the trade union movement being involved in deciding how the pension money is spent.

I seem to remember something about the teamsters, Hoffa and Las Vegas and a whole number of things but I am not going to dwell on it. As often happens in this place, I was distracted by what the government member was saying and instead I am going to focus on that.

I listened to a good chunk of the speech by the member for Regina--Qu'Appelle. I do not believe that he mentioned the theft of public sector pension funds by the government in the last parliament. I seem to remember billions of dollars were taken out of public sector pension funds that had been accumulated over the years and invested by the government.

As a matter of fact I look at the guards who are protecting us today in the House. I recognize that it was their pension funds that the government raided to the tune of billions of dollars which were literally sucked out of the fund. The government thought it was too large and basically was a nest egg to go after to try to balance the budget and allow the finance minister some wiggle room.

Does the member have any thoughts, any particular musings, or anything he needs to get off his chest with regard to the government's theft of billions of dollars from the public sector pension funds during the last parliament?

[Canada Pension Plan, June 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about Canada savings bonds providing the federal government with more funds. I first question I want to ask is quite serious. As taxpayers, many people would have trepidation with providing the government huge sums of money when they see what sometimes gets done with it. I would point, for example, to the human resources development scandal not that long ago where $1 billion was misplaced or not accounted for. That is only one example of many.

I sometimes question whether the idea of providing the government with increased revenues via Canada savings bonds is a legitimate policy on behalf of the Canadian taxpayers. I am not sure it actually serves the interests of the country as well as the hon. member might think. I would like him to comment on the feasibility of loaning more money to the government when its track record is not so good.

I served on the finance committee when the pension plan changes were last going through. For example, we in the opposition wanted to bring up representatives from the Chilean government to find out about the Chilean system. As the situation stands now in Chile, individuals know exactly how much money is in their pension fund. It is not something that is dabbled with by the government. It is a privately held account and the money can be invested in a number of private investment vehicles.

I know the member has some objections to that, but the crux of what I am getting at is that we can ask the average person in Chile how much is invested in the fund in total, how much has been deposited in a given year and what the return on investment is. I would argue that members in this place are probably some of the better informed in the country on issues of pension. Here we are debating it today.

If I were to look across the way and ask some of the hon. members how much they had put into their pension and what the return was on their investment I think some of the people debating this very law today would not have as firm a handle on it as the average Chilean would. I would ask the member why we were not allowed to bring people up from Chile on this whole question of pension reform, because I think the Chileans have done some laudable things.

I have a third question for the hon. member. We did have testimony in that committee meeting from the person who manages the Ontario teachers' pension fund. It is the largest private sector pension fund in the country. It is worth over $10 billion or at least was at that time but I imagine it is substantially larger now. That individual told us that with the changes the government brought in whereby 9.9% of someone's salary would be skimmed off for CPP purposes, it would at best buy the government an election or perhaps two. The reason he said that was that the actuarial analysis indicates that the max out of the fund will happen in about 2017 based on current demographic projections.

However, despite the 9.9% deduction right now, the fund will not be able to sustain itself. He thought that increasing it to 9.9% was a co-optive scheme by the government to try to increase the amount of revenue funds right now to cover it off for an election or maybe a second election but that after that the fund would not be sustainable and would be bankrupt anyway. He thought substantial changes were better sooner rather than later.

There are three questions. The first question has to do with giving money to the government. I do not single out the Liberal government for this because many other governments have wasted taxpayer funds. The second question deals with the fact that the Chileans were not allowed to present evidence. The third question concerns the whole idea of it basically being something that will be a massive liability. I look at the pages today and I do not think any of them seriously believe they will be able to collect a pension. It is a huge liability that we will not be able to sustain.