Mr. Speaker, the Young Offenders Act has created and worsened problems with serious repeat offenders for years and a registry of pedophiles would help curtail the sexual predation of children.
I could go on with a lot of things that the House could be dealing with, but instead for three parliaments these and other issues have not been substantially or satisfactorily dealt with. However, the MP compensation package which we are debating today will spend less than a week here in the House of Commons.
By comparison, some legislation in this place is dealt with in a glacially slow manner, while some, like this legislation, passes in what is the equivalent of the blink of an eye. I have constituents who over the last little while have been rightly complaining about that process.
M. Spevack wrote me today over the Internet. One question posed was “What is the urgency that it has to be passed in three days, since it is retroactive to January anyway?” That is a perfectly good question. If this is retroactively applying legislation there is no need to have this done in three days, in less than a week.
The other question this constituent posed was “Why can't other, more important legislation pass as quickly?” That is something that we should all spend some serious time contemplating about. I hope our constituents at home over the summer will remind members of parliament of that.
For the last six days I have been trying to do what I could, wrapping up yesterday, by doing my best to deprive unanimous consent from the government House leader to fast track this legislation. It involved some sacrifice on my part, but I thought it was important because the process we engaged in last time was an atrocious one. I thought we at least could learn from that example and better what we would do this time. I cannot say we have made much of an improvement over the last time because the process has been almost as fast.
The government House leader then rose in his place just across the way and used Standing Order 56.1, a fairly obscure procedure used an average of maybe twice a year. It basically fast tracked the legislation and imposed closure on the debate. Since 25 opposition members did not stand it was done. It was as simple as that because he is a minister of the crown.
The standing order is not something which has existed from the beginning of time with regard to parliamentary procedure. It was created on April 11, 1991. It has only been used five times since 1998: Monday, April 12, 1999; March 22, 1999; March 19, 1999; June 9, 1998; and the last time which I traced back for the purposes of this debate was February 9, 1998. It just goes to show how obscure some of these things are and that when the government is intent it will find a way to get its will.
I also rose on a point of order today right after question period. I was seeking the unanimous consent of the House to withdraw the order passed by the government House leader on Monday, June 4, pursuant to the standing order. It was forcing a fast track and all stage guillotine of Bill C-28, the bill that deals with MP and senator compensation. I was deprived of that unanimous consent.
I will speak to the commission because a lot of people have spoken with regard to the independent commission. The commission recommended that there be no increase in the MP pension plan as a result of these changes. I would like to read into the record what the commission said on page 20 of its report. It said:
The commission recommends that these changes not result in any material impact, either positive or negative, to the benefits that parliamentarians receive from the pension plan.
That was the committee's recommendation. Instead we have in Bill C-28 an increase in total compensation from $109,500 to $131,400 for the House, and from $88,200 to $105,840 for the Senate, and that it will have a commensurate impact on the pension.
I want to read into the record the other recommendation of the commission found on page 26. It said the legislation should be “retroactive to April 1, 2001, once the legislation is proclaimed”. That is not what the legislation has done. It has not followed the recommendation of the commission. It went ahead and made it retroactive from January 1.
My party is going to move an amendment to the legislation to the effect that the pay raise should come into force after the next general election. The reason we are proposing this amendment is so that the decision of parliament would be implemented after a subsequent election. This would avoid the conflict of interest members of parliament would have in voting on their own salary increases, rather than that of those who follow them, which I think would be the wiser course of action.
Those encapsulate some of my real problems with this process and as well how the policy did not follow even what the commission recommended to the tee.
I would like to lay out what I think would be an improvement to the situation. It is not party policy. It is something that I happen to believe.
I believe we should have a super retirement savings plan, similar to an RRSP, but it would be mandatory. Five per cent of individuals' salaries, whether they were janitors, presidents of a corporation, members of parliament or prime ministers for that matter, would be set aside in this account. People would know what they were contributing to their own fund. They would know the total amount of moneys they had contributed and what type of return on investment they would actually be getting.
I challenge any member in this place or anybody for that matter to know exactly how much they have put into the Canada pension plan and what benefits would be accruing to them. I would allow people to invest in bonds, treasury bills, guaranteed investment certificates and even mutual funds because in that way it would be owned by the individuals and not by the government. There would be a personal stake in making sure they knew what was happening with those funds.
I think people are fairly intelligent and they respond to incentives. The more people who work under a bureaucrat, just as an example, the more the bureaucrat earns, and so bureaucrats tend to build empires. That is the nature of government. It is a problem.
Madsen Pirie, with the Adam Smith Institute, in his book Blueprint for a Revolution , laid out how we could combat that natural built in incentive in any bureaucracy or corporation, and that is to reward people for saving taxpayer dollars.
Some of my constituents have raised concerns about the whole MP pay package because it did not have merit based pay nor performance indicators. I think our salary could be tied to our attendance, to whether or not we cast votes as we are hired to do and to whether or not we have a presence on a committee of our choice. I would even go so far as to link our salary to producing a balanced budget, lowering taxes and, for my friends in the New Democratic Party and others, maybe even having a social component to it so that if there were increased literacy, decreased surgery waiting lists, lower homicide rates or longer life expectancies, it would affect the performance rating for a member of parliament.
I will vote against the bill affecting MP's and Senator's compensation. I voted against many bills before because of their flaws, whether it was with the policy or the process, and I will have to oppose the bill as well.
