Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. He is also a significant contributor in committee.
He is absolutely right. What is even more serious is that the Prime Minister promised to govern with greater transparency. One more example of the Liberal habit of talking out of both sides of their mouth. They want to be more transparent, yet they also want to limit the Information Commissioner's budgets so he cannot process requests from the public.
Because the commissioner was insistent, the government eventually conceded. In fact, he continued to pressure the government by saying that new legislation was needed, as well as more resources. Let me assure you, neither the mechanism nor the machinery is transparent. The commissioner made several recommendations, but the government decided not to renew his contract. Yet he was the most credible person for getting through this crisis.
There is a great deal more work at access to information, because of the Liberal sponsorship scandal. That is the message the commissioner wanted to leave us with. My colleague got that clearly. The Liberal Party—not the Government of Canada—is trying to do away with the best tools for resolving the crisis, in the name of transparency.
I have a great deal of trouble understanding the Prime Minister. He sends out this message of transparency, but then ends up not giving the access to information commissioner sufficient resources. As a result, requests pile up year after year, until there is now an 18-month backlog. More than 2,000 requests have accumulated, but the situation is being allowed to continue.
This is not being done because it is the best way to provide Canada with good governance, but rather because it is the best way of extricating the Liberal Party from this scandal of its own making, which has resulted in even more access to information requests. The commissioner has made no attempt to hide this. When I asked whether he had had more requests since the Auditor General started reporting on the sponsorship scandal, he answered that yes, there was clearly an increase of between 25% and 35% yearly. He has to live with this, but he does not like it. I understand, neither do I.