I will get to that. I will show exactly why the finance minister should retract what he said at some point in the future.
These scare tactics are clever but they are misleading. In our taxpayer's budget Reformers propose that key changes to OAS would include basing the program on family income. Guess what?-that is what the Liberals are going to do as well. We say who it is going to effect. We say at what level it will effect but the Liberals do not have the courage to say what they are going to do on social programs.
In the two-year projections, the money on social programs stays at the same level of $39 billion. The transfers to provinces go down by about $2 billion without any of the tax points going over there, but they do not come clean. That is the problem. It is a budget of broken promises and it is a budget of slight of hand.
Our budget would protect those currently receiving guaranteed income supplements and not paying benefits to high income families. That is what our policy would be on the OAS. This is what the Liberals have suggested in their budget.
Let me now give a definite example. Members have been waiting for me to get to this. I am sure this is the part that is very interesting. They want to know where we get our figures. We get our figures from the government's own numbers. It is a document it produced. It is a book. I think it is coloured. It means this government is good on colours. It has the red book, the grey book, the green book, the mauve book, the white.
This is from "Creating a Healthy Fiscal Climate", page 70, annex table 26, distribution of net federal elderly benefits by household income, 1994.
Eight hundred thousand households receive less than $15,000 in income. The benefits they receive which include the OAS, the spousal portion and the GIS, are $7 billion. That would be untouched by our taxpayers' budget.
Where does the finance minister get his $11,000 figure? The next level up is $15,000 to $20,000 for 390,000 households; $2.6
billion goes there. That is nobody who receives a household income of $20,000. Even if you divide that in two, you are at 11.
Twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand dollars is the next level: 380,000 households, $3 billion goes there. Twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand dollars: 250,000 households; $1.7 billion goes there. Thirty thousand to forty thousand dollars household income: 280,000 households; $1.8 billion goes there.
Even if you took the $40,000 you would end up with $20,000. Where does the finance minister get his $11,000 number? He says if $11,000 is what we would do, I challenge the finance minister if he wants to restore and retain his credibility, because he has said this publicly, to confirm that his numbers are right in this.
If these numbers are right then there is no way that taking $3 billion out of OAS, a $20 billion envelope, and reducing it to $17 billion we going to harm one single senior who makes less than $20,000 in income. Our target is about $40,000.
I insist that if the finance minister catches wind of what I have said here today-I see that the parliamentary secretary to the finance minister is present-we deserve a correction on that. We deserve a clarification.
We are playing with peoples' lives. We do not want to scare people. We want to get to a zero deficit. We want to cut more than the Liberal government. We would cut faster than the Liberal government and you can take all the credit you want about ours being slash and burn, but we know that our projections and the way we want to do it is the right way, it is the correct way, and is the way it should be done.
For the government to accuse wrongly, neither party should do that. Both parties and all members of Parliament should try to be accurate. They have a responsibility to be accurate when they are talking about numbers and how they affect lives. We can disagree on philosophy but we should not disagree on numbers. I think I have said enough on that.
Let us turn to income security for members of Parliament. Has the finance minister made any sacrifices there? The answer is no. Canadians have to sacrifice but not MPs. They are not paid enough so the MP pension makes up for that. The old time politicians will benefit from the original plan to the new two tiered plan that will make millionaires out of many of them while future politicians will be asked to accept the reformed plan.
It is outstanding to sit in this House and listen to the Prime Minister compare his salary with professional hockey players' every time we ask him a question about pensions. Why does he compare his pension with the pension of a hockey player? Why does he not compare his pension to those pensions out there in the private sector?
What we are saying is that the compensation package has an imbalance. The compensation package for MPs is out of whack. The compensation package has to be revisited and the whole thing has to be looked at. The MP gold plated pension plan is too generous. The $64,000 a year is too low. However, this government is too heartless and lacks the courage to address the problem head on. It wants to protect all the old cronies from the past and will not address what should be addressed in the proper fashion.
There is no way that any member of this House should receive any more than matching contributions to what a member puts into a pension plan, one for one. I do not care if it is 5 per cent, 6 per cent or 8 per cent, it should only be one for one.
To boot, the Prime Minister has said he cannot reform the MP pension plan retroactively because there is a rule in democracy that we do not pass retroactive legislation.
Considering the fact the Liberals applied retroactive legislation to the Pearson contract, the EH-101 helicopter contract, the public service contracts and to Canadian taxpayers working overseas, why is it that these same Liberal politicians are not subject to the same rules as those Canadians? How can the Prime Minister contradict himself this way? It is a clever thing to say but it is a misleading point to make when the facts betray what he is saying. It is a double standard. It might be sophistry.
Once again the Liberals are leading the taxpayers to believe that they are actually reforming the system when all they are doing is making it less gold plated for the young MPs but still very generous. I cannot believe the number of rookie Liberal MPs who have been coerced and have just sat there. They are the strongest number in caucus and they sit there and let these veterans push them around. They sit there and are forced to go back to their constituents, most in Ontario, and say sorry, but they had to take this two tiered pension, they cannot sacrifice because the Prime Minister and cabinet will not let them. I cannot believe that.
The rookie Liberal MPs have an opportunity to set an example. The rookies have an opportunity to crack the whip and to show them in caucus what it is all about to be an MP: real integrity, real honesty and real leadership, not the old style partisan, pork barrelled system that has been going on for the last 25 years.
What has changed? We have a Prime Minister who is still going out to $1,000 parties that 99.999 per cent of Canadians are not even invited to. We still make blatant partisan appointments, not the Liberals who deserve to be there but blatant ones that should not be made. The Liberals are still spending $40 billion more a year than they bring in. They fail to recognize the real problem.
The finance minister talks of downsizing and reducing the cost of government when the fact is that in Ottawa Canadians still have a big government and a high spending government. Reformers believe that government governs best that governs least and the best government is smaller government.
Why is it that in the state of California 52 congressmen, 2 senators, 1 governor and 1 president represent at a federal level 29 million people?
Let us say that Canada is pretty close to 29 million people for the sake of argument. We have for the same 29 million people 295 MPs, 104 senators and one Governor General representing the taxpayers. Are we not as competent as congressmen? They can represent 500,000 people while we can only represent 100,000 people? Do we not have the intelligence? Do we not have the technology to have representation by population with a higher population base? I think we can.
Talk about downsizing the public service by 45,000 people over three years. Why do we not downsize the House of Commons? What are we doing instead? We are not going to downsize the House of Commons. While the government lays off 45,000 civil servants it is going to bring in six more MPs. There will be six more MPs in the next federal election.
Once again the Liberals want to increase the size of government. Make it big. Keep the backbenchers happy. Let a small cabinet control things. They refuse to consider more effective approaches to accommodate shifting, growing populations.
Reformers believe the House should have 265 members. Taking into account the floating nature of the population we cannot cap it because of all of the deals that have been made since Confederation. We would then have a reasonable House. We would have members of Parliament that represent more people. We would have members of Parliament that would really have some value and some input into what is going on rather than this huge size. Except for the 20 people that sit around the Prime Minister, the rest of us are just here for window dressing.
We believe the House should be reduced to a fixed number. If the size is continually expanded to match population increases, the House will reach unmanageable proportions with unsustainable overhead costs. The answer to population growth is not to increase the numbers of representatives but to periodically redraw constituency boundaries-redistricting; to redistribute seats according to population shifts-reapportionment; and introduce an elected, effective and equal Senate for regional control.
The time has come to bring back financial responsibility to government, not to make government bigger. Politicians have to be accountable to the people of Canada, to be trusted to handle their money. More faces will not improve the system. I heard a little comment about Alberta?