Prime Minister Jean Chretien blinked first before awarding a multi-million dollar bail out package to NHL team owners last year. In a face-off with public opinion, the Liberals nixed the $20 million gift before the puck touched the ice.

Since then, federal politicians have found a safer place to park the money - in their personal bank accounts.

Federal politicians will soon vote to top up the parliamentary payroll by $10 million a year. Rank and file MPs make off like bandits cashing in on a 20% pay hike compared to an even greater 42% raise for the Prime Minister.

Never again will MPs toil away as underpaid serfs earning a measly $109,500. A $22,000 raise will elevate them form the depths of despair.

And the Prime Minister will no longer have to suffer the indignity of a $184,600 income. The shame of earning such a pittance of a salary will be erased with a $78,000 raise.

The richness of our country must be measured in how we treat our politicians. Members of Parliament have become society's latest class of victims to speak out against the injustice of their undervalued salaries and only the second richest pension plan in the land.

"The life of a politician is not an easy one," mused Ed Lumley, head of the compensation commission who recommended the hefty salary hikes. He's absolutely right. The rigors of service as a Member of Parliament should not be underestimated or overestimated.

By the same token, nurses, journalists, government employees and others are equally committed to public service and are subject to their own unique set of expectations, demands and work-place pressures.

Fat chance either government or the private sector would agree to a 20 to 40 percent wage hike for these professions. It would be dismissed as an unnecessary extravagance.

Another oft-cited defense of MP pay hikes is that their salaries were frozen for seven years in the 1990s. So what? If public servants were luckily enough not to lose their jobs in the 1990s, they probably suffered a wage rollback instead. The plight of private sector workers was even worse.

In any case, wasn't it the politicians themselves who amassed such a debt burden in the first place that only the shock treatment of fiscal restraint and downsizing could reverse?

This is the crux of my irritation with the overly generous MP pay hikes. It's the endless succession of feeble arguments, whining about 'hard work' and the double standard that sets MPs apart from the rest of Canadians forced to pay politicians their pay raises but excluded from the decision to approve them.

Take note that the Liberals chose to push salary reform in the middle of their term in office. To avoid self-serving optics, the government should have agreed to make the changes effective after the next federal election. At least the voters paying for the salary hikes would have a chance to pass judgement on the value of the price tag.

It's the culture of entitlement that inspires MPs to press for more from Canadians who could only dream of such riches and the four-years of guaranteed job security. The meaty wage hikes may be a hard act to follow but, in any case, form a benchmark that will undoubtedly be used to justify increased pay by public service unions down the road.