Debates of Sept. 29th, 2014

Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Edmonton Centre.

I am pleased to congratulate the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics for its report on the statutory review of the Conflict of Interest Act. The Conflict of Interest Act was brought in as part of the Federal Accountability Act in 2007. With the tabling of this report, the standing committee has fulfilled the legal requirement that the act be reviewed within five years of its coming into effect.

This was a thorough examination and I think we have heard that from previous speakers. The review took place over several months, between January and June of 2013. In the process, the committee heard evidence from stakeholders, including public servants, subject matter experts, university professors, interest groups and the Commissioner of Lobbying. It also heard from the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner who spoke at the start and at the very end of the review.

The committee's work represents a diligent and comprehensive effort to fine-tune the Conflict of Interest Act in this country and the government thanks the committee for undertaking it. We are pleased with the result. We welcome and support the 16 recommendations outlined in the report. I would like to thank the committee for a job well done. In fact, I think all parliamentarians should be proud of both the actual work that went into the review and its broader significance for our democratic institutions.

The committee's review and the resulting report honour both Canadian values and Canadian democracy. Across our land, it is Canadians' cherished belief in fairness, merit and equality that has made us who we are today and what we stand for in the world.

This report's recommendations are squarely in line with one of the abiding principles of Canadian democracy: the idea that those in positions of power must be accountable to the people they serve. Ultimately, that is what the review of this act and the act itself are all about: increasing the accountability and transparency of those who hold public office. Accountability is the bedrock value of democratic and good government, and it has been a pillar of our democracy since Canada achieved responsible government over a century and a half ago.

The report is also in line with our government's approach to accountability and to protecting Canadians' hard-earned tax dollars. We came into office in 2006 on the promise of protecting taxpayers' money and Canadian democracy. We understood that Canada's public institutions need to be accountable and transparent because that is what would continue to make us a great nation in the future.

That is why we implemented the Federal Accountability Act and its companion action plan in 2006. When this legislation received royal assent on December 12, 2006, one of the first things we did was move to reduce the influence of money in elections. We introduced a law banning contributions to political parties by corporations, unions and organizations and lowering the limit on individuals' political contributions.

The Federal Accountability Act also designated deputy ministers as accounting officers who are accountable before Parliament for the management of their departments.

We also cleaned up the procurement of government contracts by enshrining in law a commitment to fairness, transparency and openness in the procurement process. We appointed an independent procurement ombudsman to provide additional oversight of the procurement process.

We also implemented measures to give Canadians broader and better access to more information from public organizations than ever before.

Specifically, we extended the Access to Information Act to cover the Canadian Wheat Board, five foundations and five agents of Parliament, and most crown corporations and their wholly owned subsidiaries.

We acted to strengthen ethical conduct in government. We conducted open and extensive consultations with lobbyists and Canadians about a new Lobbying Act to ensure lobbying and government advocacy was done fairly and openly.

The result, as we know, was stricter rules for lobbying activity and enhanced powers to investigate and enforce them, and there were serious penalities for breaking the rules. The penalties for lobbyists found guilty of breaching the requirements of the Lobbying Act were increased to a maximum of $200,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or both.

We also brought into force the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act. This act created an environment in which public service employees, and all Canadians, could honestly and openly report government wrongdoing without fear of reprisal.

We also created an independent Public Servants Disclosure Protection Tribunal and the position of an independent Public Sector Integrity Commissioner. We brought in the Conflict of Interest Act and named a Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. By doing so, we have ensured that Canadians have the opportunity to voice their concerns about unethical behaviour in government and to hold violators accountable.

That is not all. To give these measures teeth, we introduced new criminal penalties and sanctions for anyone committing fraud against the crown. This offence carries a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment for fraud of $5,000 or less, and a maximum penalty of 14 years for fraud over $5,000.

These are just a few of the steps we have taken to meet Canadians' needs for stronger and more accountable and transparent public institutions.

The measures we took at that time reflected the will of Canadians to do the right thing, and I see the same spirit in the work of the standing committee. The standing committee's report is consistent with our focus on accountability, transparency, and protecting taxpayer dollars. It reflects Canadians' sense of honesty and hard work. That is why we welcome and support its recommendations and will consider how best to implement these improvement, in a manner that would further the purposes of the Conflict of Interest Act. Doing so would help us build on the many achievements of the Federal Accountability Act, and it would help to ensure that our public institutions continue to reflect Canadian values and common sense.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I normally like to see cross-party congratulations. However, I am very sorry that the current government is attempting to tell the Canadian people that the members of this committee somehow worked together, that there was a sense of fairness in the committee, or that it is thankful for the work of the committee. The members who were involved in this committee were fundamentally defrauded.

We heard witnesses. We heard from numerous experts. Yet, not a single witness came forward with this absurd recommendation number one. It says that anybody who works in any government department anywhere in Canada who happens to be a member of a union is now to be treated the same as the people who do the procurement, the people who make the decisions, the same as the top Conservative operatives who meet the lobbyists.

I sat in on every one of those meetings, and this recommendation was not brought up by anyone.

I would like to ask a question to the hon. member who brought forward this recommendation. Who in the Prime Minister's Office told them to treat our committee as puppets for a recommendation that is an embarrassment to Parliament and an embarrassment to the act? Where did that recommendation come from?

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member and I do sit together on committee.

As a bit of history, we know that the Conflict of Interest Act was adopted as part of the Federal Accountability Act, in 2006. It came into force in 2007. It sets out statutory conflict of interest and post-employment rules for public office holders. These office holders include ministers, ministers of state, parliamentary secretaries, ministerial staff and advisers, and almost all positions appointed by the Governor in Council.

It also defines a category of reporting public office holders, and those reporting public office holders have additional and more stringent rules that apply to them. That category includes ministers, ministers of state, parliamentary secretaries, ministerial advisers, full-time ministerial staff, and full-time Governor in Council appointees.

We know that the Conflict of Interest Act is administered by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. The committee did make recommendations. It reflected on the assessment we heard many times that the Conflict of Interest Act is working well overall. The committee's recommendations generally proposed targeted improvements to the act rather than wholesale restructuring or repurposing. In particular, the recommendations sought to clarify ambiguous terms and concepts. Some of those are on preferential treatment, receipt of gifts, and so on.

Did the report include dissenting opinions? Yes, it did, as every report we have done at that committee basically does. There were dissenting opinions from the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party of Canada. Those reports were attached to the initial report. In both of those cases, the dissenting opinions expressed the view that a wider set of amendments should have been recommended.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was not a member of the committee, but in reading the report, the evidence, and the dissenting reports, this is not the normal process of a committee working together. I have never seen such strong dissent.

In reading this, I see that most of the recommendations seem to have been put forward without having had any witnesses making the recommendations. The advice of the Canadian Bar Association, Democracy Watch, even the Conservative platform from 2006, were ignored in favour of some quite bizarre recommendations. I am at a loss to know how recommendation number one is possibly workable, that the definition of public office holder would be so extraordinarily expanded. I do not know how the Office of Conflict of Interest and Ethics could possibly keep up with it, nor why public office holders should suddenly include so many federal employees.

Could the hon. member possibly explain what seems to be a hijacking of the committee process?

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we heard over and over again that the Conflict of Interest Act is working well overall. Therefore, the committee's recommendations in the report generally propose targeted improvements to the act rather than wholesale restructuring. We did take into account very significantly the fact that it is working well now.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and a pleasure to stand in this place to speak to the government's response to the report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics on the statutory review of the Conflict of Interest Act.

At the outset, I would like to thank the committee for undertaking a review of this important piece of legislation. I sat on the committee for most of that.

The government welcomes and supports the 16 recommendations outlined in the committee's report. The committee's recommendations were wide-ranging, and call on government to amend the Conflict of Interest Act and any other necessary acts of Parliament in a variety of ways.

The committee recommended tightening up the definition of public office holder to ensure that all appropriate people are covered, and to align the definition of reporting public office holder with that under the Lobbying Act.

The recommendations take action to prevent vague and arbitrary rulings, to better define what is meant by preferential treatment, and to clarify conflict of interest in the context of expected duties of public office holders. There needs to be a relationship.

Measures would also give the commissioner the clear authority to permit certain activities by public office holders, such as participating in or volunteering for charitable organizations and events.

The committee calls on the government to make amendments to the Conflict of Interest Act in order to enhance fairness and protect the rights of those public office holders who may be the subject of a request before the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. For instance, it includes that the examination of a complaint remain private until a formal report is made public by the commissioner; that the complaint filing and examination process be standardized; that a section be added to the Conflict of Interest Act that specifies the rights of the individual public office holder who is subject to a request; and that the act be amended so that any order or decision of the commissioner is subject to judicial review where there is an error in law.

We live in a world where some people seem motivated to make requests that could only be called frivolous, vexatious, or in bad faith. It is recommended that where the commissioner determines that such a request has been made, the commissioner be obligated to publicly disclose the identity of the member of the Senate or House of Commons who made the request. One should not be able to hide behind anonymous and frivolous requests.

It is also recommended that complaints filed by members or senators which the commissioner does not see fit to investigate be publicly disclosed, along with the complainant's name.

Finally, a number of recommendations suggest that the government take action to ensure there is more consistency between the Conflict of Interest Act, and other acts of Parliament, conflict of interest codes, and codes of ethics. It only makes sense to standardize some of those measures.

In carrying out its study, the committee heard testimony from the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, academics, subject matter experts, and other interested stakeholders. The committee is to be commended for hearing from a diverse group of witnesses and for considering a variety of perspectives.

It is clear that government and the committee both agree that the Conflict of Interest Act plays a vital role in ensuring Canadians that their elected representatives and public office holders make decisions in the public interest, without any consideration of personal gain. In fact, this principle is so important that it is incumbent on governments, at all levels, to take necessary measures to achieve this objective. That is exactly what our government has been doing by giving Canadians the information they need to judge for themselves.

We have all heard the saying that information is power. By making information accessible, we increase transparency and empower Canadians to hold their government to account. In fact, Canada is a leader in providing accessible information to citizens.

We were one of the first countries to enact access to information legislation almost three decades ago. That is why since coming to office, our government has been working hard to throw open the doors and windows of government and to make information available, not only to parliamentarians but to all Canadians.

For example, in 2006, the government introduced the most extensive amendments to the Access to Information Act since that act came into force in 1983. Most importantly, we broadened the reach of the Access to Information Act to more public institutions. Effective April 1, 2007, the Canadian Wheat Board, five foundations, and five agents of Parliament came under the act's provisions. It was about time.

All told, the Federal Accountability Act added 69 additional public institutions to the list of those covered by the legislation.

As a result, there are now some 250 public organizations that are subject to the access to information law. The services that these institutions provide are wide-ranging and far-reaching and involve many activities and services that are important to Canadians.

Ensuring greater transparency and accountability goes beyond just expanding the coverage of the act to more institutions.

We have also been working hard to improve the flow of information through the access to information system. For example, in April 2013 we introduced a pilot project to receive access to information requests and payments online from three participating departments, a number that has since grown to 21, which represent 80% of all ATIP requests.

The project provides better service to Canadians by making the process of requesting government records simpler and more convenient. Instead of printing, scanning, and mailing forms to the participating departments, individuals can now simply submit their requests online. Requesters can also securely pay the application fee for their access to information and privacy requests online using a credit card, further simplifying the process.

We also made it a requirement for all departments and agencies that are subject to the Access to Information Act to post summaries of their completed access to information requests. Each summary includes a request number, a summary of the completed request, and the number of pages disclosed, and I am pleased to say that the departments, agencies, and crown corporations are complying with this new requirement. These summaries can now be searched online from a single location: data.gc.ca.

Over 100 organizations are already posting summaries of completed access to information requests, and a full list of these organizations is also available at data.gc.ca. Indeed, this year we provided Canadians with more access to government information, over six million pages, than ever before.

Our efforts do not end there. We are also opening the records of the Government of Canada. We have taken measures to post online three million pages of archived government records that were previously restricted. Our objective is to put more and more information about government activities into the hands of the public and parliamentarians, who can use it to hold the government to account.

I am proud to say that our government is meeting that objective. For example, last year the President of the Treasury Board unveiled the expenditure database, a new searchable online database that, for the first time ever, consolidates all information on government spending in one place. We are talking about everything from spending on government programs to operational spending on things like personnel and equipment.

What this means for Canadians is that they now have a more complete picture of how taxpayer money is spent, and we as parliamentarians are now better equipped to do our jobs, which is to analyze, assess, and consider government expenditures. We all know how difficult and time-consuming it can be to go through numerous complex financial documents to try to get a whole-of-government picture of what is being spent and where. Now, with a few simple clicks, users can find out in one place what every department and agency is spending on items such as transfer payments to provinces.

Clearly, our government has taken historic action to promote accountability in government and to ensure that the powers entrusted in all of us by our citizens are being exercised in the public interest.

We welcome and support the 16 recommendations outlined in the committee's report to further strengthen the Conflict of Interest Act. The committee's work is vital to ensuring that the act is providing the clarity, fairness, and accountability Canadians rightly seek, and its members are to be commended for their efforts.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the two government members are trying to tell us that they are very pleased with the report, that it is open and extensive, that it has been fair, and that it holds violators to account, except for the Conservatives. It does not hold the Conservatives to account. These are spin doctors. This is what we are seeing.

The member just mentioned how much information the government has put out. Let me tell the House that the government routinely tells the access to information officers that it will not comply with requests. It has delays of 300, 600, 900, and at times 1,000 days for the basic right to access information.

My question to the member is this: How open and transparent is this? Conservatives can fool some of the people some of the time, but they cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have been called a lot of things, but doctor is not one of them. That is okay. I will accept that, if I would just be given a raise.

I understand why the opposition would object. That is what the opposition does, and I respect that. I sat through most of the hearings. I do not think I was in the committee for the whole time, but I was there for a good part of it. There was vigorous debate and vigorous disagreement, as there always is, especially when it comes to an area like ethics and accountability, because people have different viewpoints about what should be open, what should not be open, and what kind of limits should be put on this or that, and those are all fair points.

I will simply point to a couple of things I mentioned in my remarks. We have streamlined the process by putting it online. We have made it a lot easier for people to access it. The President of the Treasury Board has the expenditures database, which is open. All the information is there. It is verified. It is about how money is spent, where it is spent, and so on. It is there for anyone to review.

In terms of the amount of information, there were six million pages this year. Three million pages on actual government records have been opened up just this year.

There is a lot of work to be done. It is going to be one of those things, like a lot of things that government does, that is going to be an ongoing challenge. We are always going to be looking to improve it.

There is a statutory review every five years or so. There will be another one in five years, and between now and then, I know there will be a lot of debate, but government is trying to get it right. Did we get it right according to the opposition? Clearly not. That is the nature of opposition, but we are working toward it, and we are getting there.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, could the hon. member for Edmonton Centre tell us what witness or reputable body suggested that “public office holder” be expanded to include thousands of public sector workers? Could he also tell us what the rationale was and who recommended it?

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I have to honestly say, Mr. Speaker, that I do not recall where that came from. I do not have the report in front of me. I have not reread it in the last couple of days. There was a ton of information gleaned from various witnesses. There was a lot of information from the government side. There was a lot of information from bar associations and so on. The report compiled all of that information and sifted it into recommendations, which were intended to be focused and not so much broad brush and throwing the baby out with the bath water. It was intended to be focused. It was to take something that people generally agreed was working well and make it better. It focused on some things that we can make better.

Do we get it right all the time? Clearly not, and I will admit that as the government. From the opposition's point of view, we never get it right, and I accept that too. We are working in the right direction, and we are going to continue to do that.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to speak to the ethics committee's report.

The bottom line is that this report, as we have heard in the speeches so far, clearly represents one of the more egregious, but unfortunately not uncommon, examples of a complete hijacking of the legislative process, in this case of the legislative committee process, by the executive.

There is absolutely no explanation for what happened in this committee and what has happened with this report other than that the Prime Minister's office and the government in general intervened not only to direct but to control what came out of that committee.

It is not at all surprising that the government's three-paragraph response to the majority report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics says simply, “The Government welcomes and supports the sixteen recommendations outlined in the Committee’s report and agrees with the intended improvements to the COIA”. Well, pas de miracle, it is not surprising. The committee majority clearly worked in lockstep with the government to produce these 16 recommendations.

When I say worked in lockstep, that is a generous categorization of what the committee members probably did. Given everything we know about the testimony that was heard and how well it was digested by the officials in the first part of the report, which was not at all reflected in the recommendations, it rather seems to me that these committee members from the government side, the Conservative Party members of the committee, either did not have minds of their own or were literally directed as to what to do and what to put in that report.

If we had a functioning parliamentary system, this committee would have done its work unimpeded by the executive branch. It would have issued its recommendations and then the government would have decided which recommendations it was comfortable with and which ones it was not. It would have had to have stepped up to the plate to say “this is what we are prepared to do”, rather than creating a complete and utter travesty of the fusion of the executive and the legislature by saying, “Oh, we like the 16 recommendations that came out from the committee; we accept them”. It is no surprise, because the books were cooked by the executive. This whole process was a waste of time for the witnesses and for the members of the committee who actually tried to make the committee work.

The dissenting report by my colleagues, led by the member for Timmins—James Bay, makes very clear how little listening there was on the part of the Conservative members of the committee, or as I have already described, the government sitting at the shoulders of or behind those members.

The ethics commissioner indicated in her own report of 2013-2014 in respect of Conflict of Interest Act that she suggested 75 different recommendations. On page 34 of her “2013-2014 Annual Report”, she said, “I was pleased to see in the Committee’s report that it agreed with a few of my own recommendations”. She is biting her tongue. “In Recommendation 6, the Committee suggests...” and she described it. “In Recommendation 14, the Committee suggests...” and then she described it.

Out of 16 recommendations, the ethics commissioner isolated two recommendations that had come from her 75 recommendations. Of the 16 recommendations the majority of the committee put forward in its report, 11 of the 16, as the NDP's dissenting report itemized, were not reflected in the evidence in terms of either written or oral testimony.

Let us look at recommendation number one, which has rightly caused such outrage, and should. It says, in the majority report:

That the definition of “public office holder” be changed to include:

Members of organizations that collectively bargain with the Government of Canada;

Frankly, this is an out-of-the-blue, gratuitous, ideological attack on the very idea of unionized civil servants, quite apart from what I am about to get to, which is the complete unworkability of this.

Contrast it with how the majority somehow manages to avoid those in a contractual relationship with the government who are not subject to collective bargaining agreements. Somehow they are not included in the regime. Certain kinds of civil servants are, and other kinds of folks who work for the federal government are not. It is a pure attack on unionization, and it is a bloody ridiculous one as well.

The Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, in her own report, says at page 31:

...the Committee proposes a very broad amendment to the definition of “public office holder”. It recommends that all members of organizations that collectively bargain with the Government of Canada be included. The implementation of this recommendation would essentially bring all employees of the Public Service of Canada (some 260,000 public servants are members of the various public sector unions) under the Act as non-reporting public office holders. These employees are already covered by the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector, which sets out its own requirements for the disclosure and reporting of interests, and is administered within federal departments.

She basically says “Wow” in very diplomatic under-speak, but it is clear that she is concerned and it is clear that she cannot figure out why the government would do something so unjustifiable and brazen. On June 10, 2014, in the ethics committee, my colleague from Timmins—James Bay had the chance to question the commissioner, and basically asked about this very inclusion of, as she already told us, 260,000 additional people. He asked:

One of the recommendations that the government brought forward on the conflict of interest review was to put all civil servants under the public office holders' rules.

Have you examined how that would actually be enforced and who it would include?

Her answer:

Yes. I found that a very surprising recommendation. I certainly read the minority report, which suggested that there would be something like 260,000 additional people whom my office would have to administer. That obviously says to me that it wouldn't be the same office. I found that a very surprising recommendation.

No wonder; it came from nowhere other than the ideological mess that passes for the Prime Minister's Office.

Then my colleague asked:

Would you be able to operate if you had to keep tabs on an extra 260,000 people?

This goes to the workability. Her answer:

No, I think it would have to be a rule-making body. It would be a totally different system, and somebody else would be administering it. Two-hundred sixty-thousand is a lot of people.

Clearly the commissioner is an expert at understatement, but she has made very clear what a travesty this recommendation is.

At this point I would like to quickly touch on some of the many recommendations from her and from other witnesses that were not acted upon, as also noted in the NDP's dissenting report.

Nothing was done on the front of penalties, for example. The NDP recommended increasing the penalties on the finding of a contravention to include suspension for a specified period, a suspension of a member's right to vote for a specified period, imposition of a fine not exceeding $5,000, and reimbursement of the value of any gift, hospitality or benefit. None of these make an appearance in the recommendations.

It is very important, speaking now as the critic for democratic reform and parliamentary reform that we have also asked that the act be amended to include guidelines that can then be interpreted and acted upon by the commissioner on fundraising and dealing with lobbyists.

Ministers, Ministers of State and Parliamentary Secretaries—

I will now call them the ministry.

—should not seek to have departmental stakeholders included on fundraising or campaign teams or on the boards of electoral district associations....

[The ministry] should ensure that government facilities and equipment, including ministerial or departmental letterhead, are not used for or in connection with fundraising activities....

[The ministry] should not discuss departmental business at any fundraising event, and should refer any person who wishes to discuss departmental business to make an appointment with the [appropriate person].

Finally, it says that the ministry should ensure:

...that fundraising communications issued on their behalf do not suggest any connection between fundraising and official government business.

Indeed, the commissioner added her own suggestion before the committee on June 10. She said:

I have suggested in my five-year review document that the government consider making ministers and parliamentary secretaries not do any fundraising at all....

That certainly does not appear in the recommendations.

With that, I end my remarks, except to say that I would like to make a motion.

I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:

The First Report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics, presented to the House on Wednesday, February 5, 2014, and related to its statutory review of the Conflict of Interest Act, be not now concurred in but that it be referred back to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics with instruction that it amend the same by removing recommendation number one and amending the other recommendations with a view to: (a) give the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner the power to administer financial and administrative penalties; (b) enshrine the Conflict of Interest Code into law; (c) allow members of the public to make complaints to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner; and (d) make part-time or non-remunerated ministerial advisers subject to the ethics code.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

The motion has been reviewed and it is in order.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Miramichi.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister.

I am very pleased to add to this discussion on the report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics on the statutory review of the Conflict of Interest Act. Before I do that, however, I would like to thank the committee for undertaking such a thorough review of this act. This process provided an important opportunity to examine the act to ensure that it is providing the clarity, fairness and accountability that Canadians rightly seek.

As the committee noted in its report, the act is working well in accordance with its objectives, but before this act existed, the situation was far from satisfactory. There was much concern, and with good reason. The government touches on all sectors of the economy. It does this in a multitude of ways, through regulatory agencies, legislation, tariffs and tax policies, to name but a few. Canadians need to have the confidence that public office holders are impartial and act with integrity, and this government took real action.

Our first piece of legislation, the Federal Accountability Act, included the Conflict of Interest Act, which gave Canada for the first time a regime to govern the ethical conduct of public office holders, both during and after employment. These changes represented a major improvement to Canada's accountability regime, and the government welcomes the 16 recommendations outlined in the committee's report and agrees with the intent and improvements to the Conflict of Interest Act. Canada now has one of the most accountable and transparent systems of governance in the world, and the committee's recommendations can help us make that even better.

We know that a high degree of transparency makes government more accountable and is vital to the effective participation of citizens and organizations in the decision-making process. However, accountability and transparency in public institutions is something we can never take for granted. That is why we have been working hard to make more and more information available to Canadians.

By proactively making government information available, it becomes accessible to anyone who may be interested. In that same spirit, the President of the Treasury Board recently took steps to ensure that information disclosed about public service contracts is accessible and easy to understand.

The new measures ensure that more detailed information is published on contracts for services such as professional services and management consultant contracts. For example, rather than simply providing a generic description of the awarded contract, a more detailed explanation of the type of work and context is now required. It is all part of the government's effort to provide our citizens with information previously stored within the government's vault, so to speak.

In fact, we are opening the lid on a vast store of valuable information that has until very recently been diligently collected and just stored away. The Government of Canada produces and acquires vast amounts of data. This data supports service delivery in the areas such as health, environment, agriculture and natural resources. Through our open data efforts, we are now releasing information in machine-readable formats by way of portals, meta data and search tools for reuse by governments, citizens, voluntary organizations and the private sector in new and unanticipated ways. The door is now being thrown open and the possibilities are truly exciting.

The open data portal at data.gc.ca is a one-stop shop for federal government data that can be downloaded free of charge by Canadian citizens, researchers, voluntary organizations and private sector businesses. It is a collaborative effort among Government of Canada departments and agencies to provide access to data managed by the government that can be leveraged by citizens, businesses and communities for their very own purposes.

These datasets, which now number around 200,000, include everything from building permits and wait times for non-emergency surgeries, to pollution emissions and lineup times at the border. Statistics Canada, for example, has made its community level health profiles available as well as 2001, 2006 and 2011 census data and socio-economic geographic data. Environment Canada has put out information about fish stocks and freshwater quality indicator data from the Canadian environmental sustainability—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, it is late. We are talking about the Conflict of Interest Act. We are talking about the evidence that was brought. We are not here to talk about fish stocks. There is an issue of relevancy. I would like the member to speak about this report. That is why we are here to debate, not to talk about fish stocks or whatever else she wants to talk about at this time.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

I cannot say that it has not drifted some distance. I understand the theme that the member is pursuing, but I would invite her to try and bring it back toward the report itself.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it has also released information about suspected adverse reactions to health products. Industry Canada has supplied broadband coverage data and the technical and administrative frequency list that contains data on radio system frequencies.

The Treasury Board Secretariat is making data available on departments' and agencies' financial expenditures and on the 2008 and 2011 public service employee surveys. These are just a few examples. New datasets are being added as they become available. Without a doubt, our government is committed to improving accountability and increasing transparency. We have proven that not just with words but with action as well.

The measures we have put in place help provide Canadians with the open and honest government they deserve, one that acts transparently, ensures value for money and demonstrates accountability. The committee's recommendations will only serve to improve the system already in place, and the government will consider how best to implement these improvements in a manner that furthers the purposes of the act.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have the amendment brought forward by my hon. colleague from Toronto—Danforth. In this amendment we asked to give the ethics commissioner the power to fine violators, enshrine the Conflict of Interest Code into law, allow members of the public, not just politicians, to make complaints to the ethics commissioner, make part-time or non-remunerated ministerial advisers subject to the ethics code. None of this is in the recommendations that the Conservatives pushed through, but it was in the 2006 Conservative electoral platform. The Conservative Party ran on this. This was a promise they made to the Canadian people.

I am asking my hon. colleague, will she support having the 2006 Conservative Party platform on ethics and accountability if we bring that forward in a motion?

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, before the act existed, the situation was far from satisfactory, but now as the committee noted in its report, the act is working well in accordance with its objectives. I know our government welcomes the recommendations outlined in the committee's report and agrees with the improvements to the Conflict of Interest Act. Canada now has the most accountable, transparent system of government in the world. These recommendations help us make it that much better.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I find it ironic that the member talks about transparency and talks about all this data availability, yet just last week, when we tried to get some information from Statistics Canada, it said the census does not allow it. It is voluntary, and it does not get enough information now to be able to make decisions. It is quite problematic. For the Conservatives, it is “out of sight, out of mind”: if no one knows about the information, then they do not have to do anything about it.

My understanding is that during the review at committee, there were numerous important recommendations from the ethics commissioner. I want to know why, when we have an ethics commissioner who makes a recommendation, they ignore the recommendation. That is my first question.

Second, there were other expert witnesses and there were recommendations made with respect to the proposals from the Gomery commission and the Oliphant commission. We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for reports and for courts to weigh in on the legal aspect, and then we turn around and ignore them. These are recommendations with respect to ethics and accountability that could have made improvements. Why is it that the member and her government continue to ignore the recommendations?

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member opposite for the question and say how much I enjoyed working on this committee. This was my first year working on the committee. As was said here earlier tonight, we know there is still more work to be done, and we will continue to work for the good of all Canadians.

The government is presently reviewing the committee's recommendations to determine how best to implement the proposed improvements to COIA in a manner that furthers the purposes of the act.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague and friend in our caucus is quite concerned about the whole issue. The good thing is that she is on the committee, and I know she has examined the subject matter before us today. I know certain parts of it have piqued her interest and that she believes it is important for the House to know more about them. I wonder if she could share that with us at this time.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ensure that all Miramichiers, and all Canadians as well, know that our open data portal at data.gc.ca is available. It is a one-stop shop for federal government data that can be downloaded free of charge by Canadians. It provides lots of information that all Canadians would want to be seeking.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, over the last year, the member for Miramichi has spent a lot of time working on this at committee. The vice-chair of the committee, the member for Sarnia—Lambton, has been working on this committee for a long time and has truly become an expert on many of the things that have come before committee. Her input has been invaluable in helping to pursue some of the avenues that we are now attacking with respect to accountability in government since we were elected in 2006.

I would like to thank the member for Timmins—James Bay. He rightfully highlighted the fact that this government was elected in 2006 mainly on a promise of increasing accountability. It came after a time when Canadians were somewhat disappointed by the activities that they had seen from the Liberal Party beforehand with respect to the sponsorship scandal. Canadians work very hard day in and day out. They always want to make sure that the funds they send to us, that they entrust to their elected officials, are used wisely. They were rightfully outraged when information came out at the Gomery commission to show that was not the case.

In 2006, we ran on a platform of not only restoring Canada's economy and opening up new markets for our manufacturers, creating jobs and cutting taxes, but also on restoring balance in our justice system. A big part of that platform was about restoring people's trust and faith in the government and the institutions that support government. That is what brought the Federal Accountability Act forward.

The Federal Accountability Act was the first piece of legislation this government introduced after being elected. It was obviously very important. Members may recall at that time the conflict of interest commissioner, who I believe was appointed by Prime Minister Chrétien, reported only to the prime minister. He was not subject to Parliament and did not report to Parliament. He only reported to the prime minister. The prime minister at the time, I suppose, would accept reports and pass judgment on what he heard. We knew Canadians would not be confident with that mechanism.

As a result of the sponsorship scandal, we saw it was not working and that was why we passed the legislation in 2006, which subjected the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner to Parliament. Ms. Dawson, who is the commissioner right now, reports to Parliament. There was a provision in the act stating that it would have to be reviewed. It goes without saying that is something we would expect. As circumstances change, as our lives change as parliamentarians, and the tools that we use change, all pieces of legislation have to be updated. In this instance, all parliamentarians would agree that such an important act which highlights how government works in an accountable fashion, how it addresses accountability, needs to be reviewed. These things are top of mind to all Canadians. That review process is an important one.

The committee started its work in January 2013. I was not serving on the committee at that time. It took six months for the review and it finalized a report by June of that year. That report came back to committee in the fall of 2013.

The committee listened to hundreds of hours of testimony. It received recommendations from a number of individuals. By and large, we heard that people were happy with the act, but it contained some elements that needed to be addressed, some rules that needed to be clarified, and others that needed to be brought forward.

This would ensure that not just parliamentarians but the government as a whole and those who work within government, those who were entrusted to undertake the things that we have passed here in Parliament, would have that same level of accountability, because what we hear when we go back into our ridings, especially coming out of the sponsorship scandal, is that although parliamentarians are ultimately responsible for the decisions they make, what we saw in the sponsorship scandal was that parliamentarians enabled people down the line, people who work within the public service, to make decisions on their behalf, which then caused a lot of the trouble, as we saw in the sponsorship scandal.

We heard a lot of this through our consultations within our ridings and consultations at the committee. We heard that certain rules had to be tightened up and that certain people had to be brought within the scope of the Conflict of Interest Act. That is what we acted upon.

However, we also wanted to make sure that any changes reflected the fact that Canadians by and large, as well as those working under this act, could be confident that it was actually doing what it was designed to do: provide a set of rules for those of us who are elected, those of us who are ministers or parliamentary secretaries or ministers of state, to govern the way we act, the way we do our business, and to make sure that those activities are done in an honourable and ethical fashion.

I think what we have seen is that by and large, it is working. That does not mean that every single provision and every single thing that we have done with respect to improving accountability is perfect. Obviously that is why the five-year review was put in place: to ensure that we can improve on all of the things that we do.

One of the things that was highlighted, something that I think really underscores the differences between this act and what came before it, is the independence of the commissioner herself.

As I highlighted earlier in my discussion, the previous commissioner reported only to the Prime Minister. Under this act, the commissioner reports to Parliament. The commissioner can make investigations; those investigations are made public and are reported to Parliament. Parliamentarians can learn from the unfortunate mistakes that some of our colleagues might make. We can know what they did wrong or what they may have made a mistake with, and we, the rest of us, can learn from those mistakes.

Previously, that was not how it worked in this place, so that is a huge benefit over the previous system.

As I said, I reviewed a lot of the testimony, and what we heard from a lot of the testimony was very clear: we had to continue to do all we could to ensure that ethical practices were followed, that the act itself was working properly, and that this was not the time to throw out an act that was working well and completely start all over. However, some areas needed to be modified.

Recommendations came through the committee after almost a year of debate in committee. The report was finalized, if I am not mistaken, toward the end of October or early November. My colleague from Sarnia—Lambton can probably correct me if I am wrong on that. After almost a year of consideration, we came out with a report.

Obviously the opposition did not appreciate all of the recommendations that came through the majority of the committee members, but the process also allowed them to make a comment, and there was, of course, a minority report that was attached. It also becomes part of the public record for debate.

By and large, the committee actually did what it was supposed to do, what it was tasked to do. It looked at an act, an act that is a good act and that has fundamentally changed how public office holders work within government. It is transparent, it is open, and it gives clear indication to the Canadian people that their politicians, those they elect, are acting in an ethical manner, but it also says that as time moves on, we will make sure that we improve on it, and that is what we did. The committee worked in a very good fashion on this task. It took the time it needed, it listened to the witnesses that it needed to, and, after almost a year of study, it came up with these recommendations.

I think they are good recommendations. I commend the committee members, especially the member forMiramichi and the vice-chair, the member for Sarnia—Lambton, who did extraordinary work.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague and the history lesson of what brought this act about. We certainly need to root out the horrific corruption that was endemic back in the Liberal years.

In this five-year review, which was a reasonable timeline to review because we did not know how the act was going to work, a lot of the testimony was focused on who should be under the act. We call them the public office holders. These are the people who hold power and make decisions. These are the people in charge of procurement, sometimes in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars, the people who are lobbied. Therefore, the question was this. Who should be under it and how should the act ensure that it is not too broad but it is broad enough to ensure that people cannot be corrupted or that they would not undermine their public roles?

However, at no point in any of the testimony that I heard, and I was at pretty much all of the committees, was there the idea that we were going to throw every civil servant in the country under the act, which now means, if we follow the recommendation brought forward by the Conservative government, that the ethics commissioner would have to oversee more people than live in the city of Saskatoon. Anyone looking at that would think it an absurd position to take, being that the people who are now under this act, along with the people who handle procurement, and the people who are being lobbied, sometimes could have the most minor position. However, because they are in the federal government they would be under the act.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague this. Where the heck did this recommendation come from?

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, by and large what we have is a professional and honest public service. I do not for a second think that every single member of the public service would, at one point or at some time, be brought in front of the ethics commissioner for a conflict of interest investigation. That is not what this is about. Nor has every member of Parliament been brought in front of the ethics commissioner.

What the act is intended to do is to ensure that there are rules that have to be followed to ensure that the government and those who work with the government act in an ethical manner, that if that did not happen there would be someone who could investigate to see where the failing was, and if further action needed to be taken that would happen. That is what these recommendations highlight.

As the member said, it is something that came out of the years of corruption or mismanagement that we saw, especially highlighted throughout the sponsorship scandal and the final Gomery report.