Stephen Harper

[Quebec Referendum, September 26th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is also for the Prime Minister.

Did the government explain that its statements regarding a political and economic union are not a threat but represent the best interests of the rest of Canada; that Canada will never allow a foreign country to become involved in this Parliament, in its monetary policy, in its equalization payments; and that, if Quebec votes No, it will become a foreign country like any other?

[Quebec Referendum, September 26th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago the government said that a yes vote was a one-way ticket to separation. Last week the government refused to say that yes means yes and accused the Reform Party of being disloyal for suggesting the government make the consequences of a yes vote clear.

Today the finance minister said in Quebec that a yes vote would mean "the certain destruction of Quebec's economic and political partnership with Canada".

My question is for the Prime Minister. Is the government now prepared to be clear to Quebecers that this referendum is a yes or a no to separation and that the no side must win for Quebecers to enjoy the benefits of Confederation?

[Quebec Referendum, September 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the minister.

We still demand that the government show transparency. Did the minister explain to Quebecers that, if the Yes side wins, and especially if it does by a narrow margin, the Government of Quebec, the PQ government, will be negotiating separation from a position where Quebecers will be divided, weakened and isolated?

[Quebec Referendum, September 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the unity minister.

Reformers had agreed with and supported the government when it said that a yes vote was a one-way ticket to separation and that it

would be respected. Without explanation that strategy was changed on us and we have been wondering why.

We have obtained a letter written by the Liberal member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. It indicates categorically that the federal government will not honour a yes vote. It states: "The results of the referendum will not be binding and have no legal consequences. The federal government has no obligation to respond".

Does this represent the real position of the federal government?

[The Economy, September 19th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, we had all summer to deal with this issue and I am surprised we are back here without a set date for an economic and financial statement.

My supplementary is for the same minister. Among the eleven governments in Canada, the PQ government and the federal government are the only ones without a commitment to deliver a balanced budget. Why has the Minister of Finance pursued the fiscal policy of the separatist government by avoiding a commitment to a deadline for a balanced budget?

[The Economy, September 19th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the government claims to be champing at the bit to deal with other issues in Parliament and Canadian taxpayers from coast to coast are concerned about their economic security regardless of the outcome of the Quebec referendum.

Can the Minister of Finance give us a precise date for his fall financial statement and will that statement include a target date for elimination of the federal deficit?

[Quebec Referendum, September 18th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, this country is not going to stay together just on the basis of one man's interpretation of a referendum question. It will stay together because the Prime Minister and others are successful in convincing Quebecers to vote no.

I again ask the Prime Minister why he does not simply do what the Leader of the Opposition is unwilling to do and tell Quebecers that their vote counts, yes or no, and that democracy is on the side of the federalists?

[Quebec Referendum, September 18th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that I am extremely disturbed and I think Canadians will be disturbed at the answers the Prime Minister gave to the leader of the Reform Party.

We have the separatists in Quebec telling Quebecers that they can vote yes and have this imaginary union. Now we have the Prime Minister saying that a no vote counts and a yes vote may not count. I ask the Prime Minister to reconsider that position carefully. Is he not really telling Quebecers that it is easy and without risk to vote yes when that is not the case?

[Members Of Parliament Retiringallowances Act, June 22nd, 1995]

Let me talk about the opt out once again. I want government members, even though they are going to march in here and vote for the bill, to seriously consider the opt out. The opt out is not ideal. I have said this before and I will say it again, the ideal situation is a fair pension plan for members of Parliament, not nothing but not too generous. Since those are the choices, I would suggest we opt out.

What the government is doing to convince the public that this is okay is simply not working. I have made some reference already to the tactic. One has been to misquote figures, to try and rationalize this as somehow not really better than what anyone else is getting. Nobody believes that. Not an expert in the country will come forward to verify those numbers.

The other attempt to rationalize this has been to basically slander various Reform members of Parliament. For example, the member for Beaver River is opportunistic in opting out. There have been other slanders and fabrications against her which I will not get into.

It is also said that ex-military members are double dipping. This is an interesting definition of double dipping. Suddenly all Canadians, who after having had a career and qualifing for a pension in a normal way and who enter a second career, are somehow double dipping. Now we have hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are now defined as double dippers.

There was the great one members actually thought they had going for a few days which was that the member for Calgary Centre had advocated massive pay increases when, in fact, what he was suggesting was that the government be transparent about the salaries the MPs are actually being paid, taking into consideration all the benefits, all of their untaxed allowances and all their accrued pensions.

What is interesting about all of these things is that they are not in the bill. That definition of double dipping is not in the government's legislation. The government, while it continues to raise the compensation issue, did not raise it in the legislation. It is only a bill on MP pensions.

There has been a lot of talk about the pay issue but I want to get something on the record because my views on the pay issue are a little different than most of the people in the House and probably a little different from some members of my party. This party has consistently said: "Cut the pension to normal with no pay increase whatsoever". We tabled amendments to that effect and the Liberal members all voted against them.

However, let me talk about the process of determining pay. There have been commissions to study the pay issue. In fact, one thing we noticed when we had the committee hearings for one day was that the commissions appointed by this federal government such as the Lapointe or Sobeco study, had considerably more generous views of remuneration than some of the commissions that had been appointed in the provinces. All of them had concluded that MPs or ex-MPs were basically underpaid and they gave some reasons for that which deserve study. However let us be very clear about how they arrived at that conclusion.

First, all these commissions proceed by essentially asking members of Parliament and former members of Parliament what they do, how much they could earn elsewhere and how much they think it is worth. That is essentially how the commissions operate. They then come up with a recommendation that we are all underpaid. They accept the stories that all members of Parliament tend to tell, which is that prior to coming here they had brilliant careers and were earning hundreds of thousands of dollars somewhere else. Some were. As we all know, the member for Calgary Centre was. The Minister of Justice was. There are some other members who had very brilliant careers both in this House and in the previous Houses.

However, that is not always true. Before I was elected, I worked around here and I know about some of the brilliant careers.

The second story told is that all members of Parliament do valuable work while they are here. They work long and hard hours all the time, on critical tasks of great importance to the nation and their constituents.

The third story told is that through no fault of their own, members suddenly find that when they are turfed out of office, despite their previous brilliance and their brilliance while here, they find themselves virtually unemployable and can find no work.

There are elements of truth in all of these statements but I do not think we should accept them at face value. Some of these commissions should have examined this a little more closely. I will not talk about careers. As I say, some people clearly have had good careers and some people, depending on their occupational background, have an chance at adjusting back into the workforce. I know the member for Halton-Peel and I have discussed the fact that certain occupations are given to readjustment to the workforce while others are not.

I would like to talk for a minute on this one point about the valuable and hard work because it is important. It is time we started calling a spade a spade around here. Have we worked hard this week? You had better believe it, Madam Speaker. We have worked bloody hard. We have been up every day this week until midnight and 1 a.m. voting on bills.

What about those votes? Those votes were all predetermined. There were no surprises in any of them, although there were a couple of little surprises, but all of these votes were predetermined. In fact, they were so predetermined that half of the time people did not even know what they were voting on. However, they certainly did not need to know what they were voting on even if they did.

The question that the taxpayers should be asking is not whether this is hard work, because this is hard work, but whether it is valuable work. They should be asking whether staying up all night to go through these rituals has been worth a hell of a lot of money to them.

Let me mention another example. We sat in a committee all day. We had flown in witnesses from across the country to study the MP pension bill. They came in early in the morning and we sat there all day, morning, afternoon and evening. Did we stop for five minutes to review or discuss any of the committee testimony to determine whether there was anything in it that might apply to the legislation? No. We proceeded to clause by clause consideration and did the bill in 12 minutes. Therefore, we went through the ritual of flying these people in and hearing from them.

The question once again is: Hard work costs a lot of money. Was it of any value? The truth is, and this is not a phenomenon restricted to Canada but certainly one that has become worse here, that many MPs play very little or any real legislative role. It does not matter whether they are ignoring their constituents' views, their election commitments or their personal principles and knowledge, we know that most MPs will simply vote with the party no matter what the bill is about and whether they have read it or not.

What really is the value of that? What really is the equivalent to that? Is that equivalent, as some would tell us, to being a senior executive? If that is the way the government and others believe the House of Commons should work, maybe MPs are regional sales reps for their political parties. Maybe that is the comparison we should be making.

I am just giving another point of view. An independent commission should look at those kinds of issues. Maybe it would end up not looking at how we are remunerated but what we are doing around here and whether we can make it more effective.

There is one little item of which I have to make some mention. I normally do not talk at all about my personal life but let me digress for a second. In the committee meeting, the President of the Treasury Board said, and the parliamentary secretary repeated it today, that before we opt out of these pensions we should consult our families. He said that we were really doing our families wrong by doing this. It was a valuable suggestion.

I got married just after I came to the House. I have been married a year and a half. I am starting to understand this marriage thing. I said: "Before I opt out I should really consult my wife. It concerns the future and our future". I thought it was the right thing to do to opt out but I thought: "Yes, this wise advice. I should consult my wife". The treasury board president, the expert on family values that he is, advised me to do this.

I talked to my wife Laureen and explained that this potentially could be very expensive for us. I tried to explain it to her. This point is important because in the riding she talks to people. She is in touch with her family. She is not in this cocoon. She said to me: "There may be some truth in what you are saying but the reality is that both you and I know that the pension plan is way too generous. We know what the public thinks about it and we know what it is". She said: "You did not get elected to rip off the taxpayers. Frankly, if you or I ever find ourselves in a financial situation on the job or any other job where we are doing that, then we had better find other work". That is the only way to look at this.

Reform MPs in opting out are not making a political point on a particular day. Let me be very clear to Liberal members about this, those who are thinking of participating. In opting out we are making a solemn pact with the taxpayers. The pact is the following. This pension plan is not reformed satisfactorily. It is

not an acceptable plan. By opting out we have no stake in it whatsoever.

The government can refuse future opt outs and it can grandfather the present recipients if it wants but if we form the government we have no vested interest whatsoever in this scam. When we have the chance to put in a plan, if this is not changed, there will be no grandfathering. There will be no trough regular and trough lite. We will take every legal step necessary to cut benefits that were not adequately contributed to by members of Parliament. We will lead by example in reforming the fiscal situation of this country. We will start here and we will not spare the people who made the decision to opt into that plan. That is our commitment.

[Members Of Parliament Retiringallowances Act, June 22nd, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to voice my opposition to Bill C-85, an act to amend the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act. I would first like to say a word about the position of the Bloc Quebecois. The Bloc Quebecois has explained well the problems with the Senate and with ambassadors' pensions, for example.

But the fact remains that the Bloc supported the government in this matter in order to keep their pensions from the Parliament of Canada just before the referendum on independence. I remind this House that the members of the Bloc have the option of not participating in this plan. They must explain their participation to their constituents.

I have given a lot of thought to what I might say today. There has been a lot of emotion in the debate and I must admit that I share in a lot of the emotion. Because I like to avoid a lot of emotionalism, I probably will avoid some of it in my speech today. This is not because I think I should but because, perhaps in my state of mind at the moment, I would be better to stick to some of the facts and to try to make some arguments that hopefully a few on the other side will listen to at the last minute.

I will not get into the statistics about the generosity of the plan. Those are well known now by the public. We have a very rare occasion here. In supporting a government bill we have a coincidence of a lack of intelligence and a lack of integrity at a single time which I would not say is unprecedented but should give members cause for reflection.

Let me review some of the headlines in the newspapers of the last couple of weeks on this topic. According to the Montreal Gazette : Voters won't forgive MPs for keeping lavish pensions''. From the Ottawa <em>Citizen</em> :Pension issue certain to haunt Liberals''. My personal favourite in my favourite newspaper, the Calgary Herald : ``MPs pensions still too rich''.

All of us in the House have been around long enough. Even those who have not been around very long have been around long enough to know that not everything we read in the newspaper is true. However I believe in this case there is a certain correlation between the reality and the reporting.

Let us take a little time to go back to the testimony we heard before the procedure and House affairs committee studying the bill and to some of the comments of my friends across the way. It is important to do this so that after the next election, when we look back at the day this bill was passed, we will see just how prophetic many of the commentators and experts were when discussing the bill.

I had done some teaching before I came to the House and this is an opportunity to do a little teaching here about what will happen if self-interest overcomes principle.

One witness before the committee, Mr. Robert Fleming, had written extensively about the compensation of elected officials as well as the broader issues that universally face legislatures across the world. I will read Mr. Fleming's closing remarks to the committee. Perhaps the House will pay closer attention to these than committee members did. I do not repeat Mr. Fleming's remarks because I agree with all he said. In fact he is more sympathetic to the bill than I am. Nevertheless Mr. Fleming said:

All I'm saying is that I don't think you're listening to some of these issues-Regardless of what the President of the Treasury Board or anyone else says, they are flying in the face of public opinion if they don't put this into the hands of the broader community to debate and examine.

I'm not talking about the traditional form of commission conducted, as we are, in this forum, but I'm talking about a way for sensible people, who are fair and include knowledgeable parliamentarians and actuaries getting together to look at the whole picture and saying this is what should be done. Again, I believe if you permitted this at this point pretty darn soon, before it gets out of hand, that without credible results you probably would come out smelling like roses and with much better results.

If this doesn't happen, I feel, and I've talked to very reasonable and sensible Canadians about this, who I think have their heads screwed on and not the sort of people who are going to jump to conclusions. But they definitely feel that you are quoting your own counsel, pushing your own show ahead. And it's going to be to the detriment of the Liberal Party of Canada, the Government of Canada, and it's definitely going to be to the detriment of the people of Canada. I think this has to be taken into account.

Again, as somewhat of a political scientist, the Liberal Party of Canada has had a marvellous go at it since October 1993. But I think the thing risks becoming unravelled if this kind of situation is not dealt with in a totally and utterly open manner. This applies to everything concerning the administration of the House of Commons.

Broadly speaking there was consensus among all of the witnesses the committee heard that Bill C-85 is a bad idea for all sorts of reasons and certainly politically a very bad idea.

This witness also pointed out: "The fact that 81 qualifying members are Liberals and only 14 belong to other parties suggests that the government should tread warily and wisely in advancing legislation. This is an area which has become a political minefield". The government has made very little attempt to get cross party consensus on this.

Former Conservative MP and actuary Paul McCrossan had something to say on this also. According to him Bill C-85 is bad for members, bad for Parliament as an institution and bad for Canada. Mr. McCrossan went on to explain how Bill C-85 will hamstring Parliament, how it will destroy any legitimacy the government has or might have had in redesigning Canada's national retirement income and medical care system, just when these changes are most needed in the face of Canada's flourishing debt and aging population. We know about the government's plans in those areas.

Mr. McCrossan talked about the need for Parliament to act with integrity and to redesign our national social plans rather than let a future crisis arise and dictate their reform. He talked about the effect that passing the bill would have on generating immense public outrage for protecting privileged positions just when reductions in national benefits are being proposed for other Canadians.

This witness talked about the public's feeling toward politicians. We have all heard this: "They are all crooks". He told the committee the underlying cause of this attitude, and I agree with him, was politicians have consistently established one set of rules for themselves and one for the general public.

Referring to the potential passing of this bill without amendments he said: "Once again, in that case you deserve the public's contempt". I agree with that.

Mr. McCrossan recently published an article in Benefits Canada . In it he describes the Conservatives' attempt to reduce the generosity of the plan. The Conservatives promised this in 1984 and never delivered on it. I will read the excerpt once again:

Wilson asked me to help him present his proposals for changing MPs' pensions to the last PC caucus meeting before the 1988 election. He wanted a mandate to proceed before the election was called so that the new Parliament could start with a new plan. A riot broke out. For about 20 minutes Wilson tried to explain either the problem or its solution. He was not allowed to speak. Member after member shouted him down. Whenever calm was restored and Wilson tried to speak, bedlam erupted. Finally he gave up.

Can we not see it happening all over again, this time in the Liberal caucus? We all know about the press reports.

I understand the minister also tried to bring about some significant reforms which were ultimately thrown out of caucus and of cabinet. Who will pay the price for this? The price will ultimately be paid by first term backbench MPs sitting across the way who really do not support this plan, probably really do not understand it, but who will go along with the whole Liberal government group think thing. I hope they will at least consider opting out. I will address that again later.

The voters may forgive them if they opt out, but that is the only way they will be around long enough to qualify for this plan. What it is interesting is they will end up supporting this plan, it will be their votes which pass it, it will protect and enlarge the pensions of the most senior members of the government and they will end up out of their seats with no pension whatsoever.

During the report stage debate on the bill the chief government whip asserted there was nothing wrong with this plan, that outflows matched inflows and had for years. This is an example of some of the misquoting of statistics that has gone on around here.

What the chief government whip did not mention was the size of those inflows, or the source, is exclusively tax dollars and the vast majority does not come from the members' of Parliament pay cheques.

Second, the vast majority of the outflows has yet to come and the inflows are to cover the future liability streams created by this pension plan.

Let me quote again from Mr. McCrossan's article as he refers to Don Mazankowski's half hearted attempts at reform: "Even well informed MPs like Don Boudria, the chief government whip, continued to assert in debate that the government's chief actuary had said the MPs pension plan was actuarially sound". That has been repeated in this debate. "In his latest report published prior to the 1991 House of Commons debate the chief actuary pointed out the plan had only $27.9 million in assets to cover about $182.7 million in liabilities. Also, the normal cost of the plan was rising". To cover the actuarial liability we now have these huge inflows each year.

During the one day of witness testimony-the committee never did study the bill-at the procedure and House affairs committee, the government whip made some other enlightening comments. He talked about his situation and how well off he would be if instead of having the MP pension plan he had participated in an RRSP plan with contributions matched dollar for dollar by his employer, ostensibly the House of Commons.

He said that under the MP pension plan he would enjoy a benefit if he retired today of somewhat less than $30,000 year. According to our calculations it would be closer to $36,000 a year, but $30,000 under the new proposal. Remember this does not apply retroactively and so he would be getting $36,000 a year.

My office did the calculation. The government whip said he had calculations but never tabled them. I have done the calculations according to the assumptions outlined by the government whip. I see some truthful aspects but his answers still required scrutiny.

He said he would be eligible for a pension of about $27,000 a year already under a matching RRSP arrangement. He forgot to mention that under an RRSP plan like other Canadians are eligible for, contributions of the size he is talking about fully matched by an employer would be illegal. Our 11 per cent plus an 11 per cent match make 22 per cent, which is well above the legal limit. No other Canadian would be allowed to shelter that much of their income from tax and have it grow without paying taxes on the income it generates. An investment of this type would not have the expensive advantage of full indexation offered under Bill C-85.

As the member for Mississauga West pointed out several times during the committee's hearing, the government may decrease the contribution for limits on RRSPs in any case. Where would that leave MPs? It did not seem to bother her that

this would affect millions of other Canadians negatively. This is an important point.

Applying the Income Tax Act in the same way it applies to other Canadians lowers the government whip's expected pension benefit from $27,000 to only about $22,000, which is not a bad pension considering he has only been on the job here since 1984.

Compared with a fully indexed pension of $35,000 to $36,000 which he would collect if he resigned tomorrow, this may not look quite so inviting. Fully indexed as provided for under this plan at the current inflation rate, this $35,000 would grow and would be worth approximately $82,000 in tomorrow's dollars by the time he was 75.

An annuity purchased with an RRSP would still be worth only $22,000. In other words, in 30 years or so he would find his pension is worth only $5,000 or $6,000 in today's dollars. This is a very different case and we start to see why this plan is so costly to taxpayers.

Let us be serious. Will the member and the government really try to tell ordinary Canadians they could have a $60,000 salary for 10 years and retire for the rest of their lives with a pension that would support their every need and more? Seriously, Canadians do not live in that kind of world. We should not invent those kinds of numbers.

According to one witness, Mr. Brian Corbishley, to provide the benefits promised under this bill would take an investment of about $34,000 for each year of service; this is for the ordinary, backbench member of Parliament, not someone with an additional salary they can contribute like the government whip. Basically Mr. Corbishley is saying it would take a matching contribution of 26 per cent of a member's salary to fulfil the government whip's assertions.

Several government members have indicated they believe the 9 per cent contribution level in the bill is too high. Obviously it is not nearly high enough to provide the benefits the bill provides.

The government did, I believe inadvertently, make an important point. A plan with matching contributions, properly invested over a long period of time, even one that was legal under the Income Tax Act, would help to provide a reasonable retirement income and would save the taxpayers a bundle.

The cost for a one to one plan like we proposed, about 9 per cent MP salary matching, would cost about $1 million. That is about $6 million less than the government's contribution costs, to which it must add $23 million in interest charges it has to fork out for the present plan. That is a saving of about $29 million a year and clearly there is no comparison whatsoever in the cost.

I hope my speech has cleared up what is maybe some honest misconception regarding the plan with members opposite. We know the debate has at times been very emotional. There have been all kinds of accusations levelled. My hope is in talking about these personal cases that I not bring it back to that level but use them as examples to put forward some of the honest problems the public finds with the bill.

Unfortunately it does not appear we will solve this problem in the House. My position and that of my party is we must bring in a plan which is no more generous than the average private sector plan and that we need an independent body to do it and there must be full disclosure of all the benefits.

There seems to be some confusion on what a normal pension plan is. The President of the Treasury Board gave some statistics when he appeared before the committee, which the parliamentary secretary repeated today. I will go over them because they talked about misleading statistics. The President of the Treasury Board has presented statistics about what a normal pension plan is. Let us go over a normal pension plan.

Normal for most Canadians is no employer pension plan at all. According to Statistics Canada, as of January 1, 1992 only about 47.5 per cent of employed paid workers were fortunate enough to belong to an employer pension plan. About half of those were workers who belonged to pension plans in the public sector.

The minister told that committee 44 per cent of all pension plan members have some form of automatic indexing. What he neglected to mention was in the private sector less than 12 per cent have any automatic protection from inflation, and full protection of the kind offered to MPs in Bill C-85 is virtually unheard of even in the public sector.

The minister indicated as well that about 95 per cent of all pension plan members are in defined benefit plans which provide a set formula to determine benefit payments. According to Statistics Canada, only 43.7 per cent of all plans are of this type. Some of the larger plans have this but over 50 per cent do not. Those who do not have an employer benefit plan are almost always in a contributory plan, not a defined benefit plan.

The minister did not present any comparative statistics on benefit rates, and with good reason. While his proposal gives MPs a benefit rate of 4 per cent per year of service, only 2 per cent of all pension plan members have a benefit rate above half of that.

One departmental official, when I asked how many other Canadians had this kind of benefit rate, conceded none to his knowledge. There could be the odd chief executive officer with a special deal but none he is aware of.

Similarly, the President of the Treasury Board did not bother to present any statistics on the minimum age for collection of benefits, which is 55 in the bill. However, in over 90 per cent of all registered pension plans the normal age of retirement is 65. A hearing is going on today just down the street in the federal court, the Information Commissioner versus the Minister of Public Works and Government Services. The government has asked that the hearings regarding the release of information on MP pension benefits be held in camera. It does not even want taxpayers to hear its argument for not releasing the information.

I would have thought if it had some reasonable reasons for suppressing the information, and I cannot imagine what they would be, it would want the voters to know what the reasons might be.

In my opinion it is in the best interests of the public for the information to be readily available. It will affect who is elected. That will affect the quality of government. Voters have a right to know how their tax dollars are being spent.

As I pointed out previously in the House, individual member's salaries and expenses are printed in the public accounts. Why are their pension benefits or at least the cost of those benefits not available to the taxpayers? So much for more open government. So much for government with integrity. On this kind of issue we might as well have had Brian Mulroney and his Tory party sitting across the way.