John Baird

[Governor General's Special Warrants, April 11th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, as required by section 33 of the Financial Administration Act and as part of our commitment toward accountability and openness, I am honoured to table, in both official languages, the statement on the use of Governor General's special warrants.

[Government Accountability, April 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it appears that my colleague from the New Democratic Party has some capacity of clairvoyance to be able to anticipate what is in the bill.

The bill will bring in major reforms with respect to access to information, including opening up many large crown corporations, finally allowing access to information in the billion dollar secret foundations established by the previous government. It will also bring in major reforms to bring in a corruption watchdog to protect whistleblowers against bullying by the Liberals. It will end the revolving door between lobbying firms and ministers' offices and will clean up government once and for all.

[Government Accountability, April 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I can confirm to the House that this government will proceed with all the commitments that we made in the last election campaign. We will be presenting a bill tomorrow with more than 250 sections, one that meets all 13 of the broader commitments we made with respect to cleaning up the mess left to us by the previous government. We will move forward with substantial and meaningful changes to the Access to Information Act, something that should have happened over the last 13 years.

I would note again with great interest that some people, including the access to information commissioner, think we are far too radical and going too far.

[Government Accountability, April 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I can confirm to the member that the Prime Minister and this government will keep its faith, will keep its commitment and deliver the federal accountability act as its first piece of legislation when we table it tomorrow.

The bill that will be tabled in this place tomorrow will be the toughest piece of anti-corruption legislation ever tabled in Canadian history and will clean up the ethical mess left to us by the previous government.

[Access to Information, April 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the one thing that has been absent on the debate about the federal accountability act is the absence of a call of support from the official opposition. I hope tomorrow they will be announcing that they will be standing up and supporting our federal accountability act.

I read with great interest in the Ottawa Citizen this morning that one person who thinks we have gone too far with our proposals is the commissioner himself. It said, “Don't give me too much power, info czar says. Reid says Tories' proposals far more 'radical' than he requested”.

We will move forward with real reform to the Access to Information Act.

[Access to Information, April 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I learned with great interest, by the comments of the member opposite, that all of a sudden now, after 13 long years in government, he has a real interest in accountability.

Let me confirm that the government will be announcing tomorrow that we will be proceeding with all the campaign commitments we made with respect to accountability and we made to clean up the ethical mess left by the previous Liberal government.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I sincerely apologize to the Chair and in the interest of being able to debate the important issues which our constituents sent us here to do I look forward to hearing the next speaker.

[Accountability, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am quite pleased to work with my colleague from Quebec. I can tell him that the answer to his question is yes.

[Government Contracts, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite obviously does not know what accountability looks like. I am the minister. I take responsibility. The moment a political actor heard about this change, heard about this contract, we believe in providing leadership by example and the contract was terminated.

[Government Contracts, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, as minister I take responsibility for what goes on in my department. The moment that my political staff and I learned of this contract, it was immediately terminated.