Thank you, Madam Speaker. Whenever you are asked to vote on a bill, you are to ask yourself, "What is the purpose of this bill?" Clearly, the purpose of this bill is to make a small cut of a couple of per cent on the indemnities for 24 people. I have not heard anybody calculating what the cost is going to be. Whenever we talk about principle, what is the principle of the bill? The principle of the bill we are trying to amend is that, if you wanted to buy an orange last year, it would have cost you so much, then you should be able to buy the same orange this year and it wouldn't cost you any more because your money will, in fact, be protected from inflation. That was the principle that we used to decide that we should, at least, have an increase to keep pace with inflation. That is the first principle that we voted on previously. Members are going to ask themselves, "What is the new principle for, in fact, getting rid of that bill so that it no longer has a protection for people who want to buy that orange that they bought for a certain amount last year and can't buy it for the same amount this year?"

The most cynical view of this bill, Madam Speaker, is that what we are doing is sacrificing these 24 people. It is a very small sacrifice. It is a tiny little sacrifice. But, for many people out there, and they number in several thousands, I believe, they will take the cynical view that what we are doing here is to take a very small amount of money from 24 people so that a thousand or five thousand people will lose considerably more if you look at the total amount of money that is going to be lost.

I am supporting the bill because that is the principle. The principle is that we are going to take an amount of money from 24 people because we want to give a message to the other 5,000 people that they are going to have to sacrifice as well. Let's be honest about what the purpose is. The purpose is to tell people that there is going to be a cut. There are going to be tough times ahead. These 24 people are going to show the way by taking this tiny amount of money so they can save several hundreds of thousands of dollars from the larger group of people who would be affected. Thank you.