Bill C-461 (Historical)

CBC and Public Service Disclosure and Transparency Act

An Act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act (disclosure of information)

This enactment amends the Access to Information Act to provide that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation may refuse to disclose any information requested under that Act if the information is under the control of the Corporation and the disclosure would reveal the identity of any journalistic source or if the disclosure could reasonably be expected to prejudice the Corporation’s journalistic, creative or programming independence.
It also amends the Privacy Act to specify that certain information is not personal information for the purposes of that Act.

CBC and Public Service Disclosure and Transparency Act

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak for a few minutes on the subject of Bill C-461, An Act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act (disclosure of information).

I begin by thanking the member for Edmonton—St. Albert for his efforts to bring forward this issue. Bill C-461 promotes greater transparency and accountability, not only in relation to CBC but also in relation to the public service as a whole.

Overall, the government agrees with what Bill C-461 is trying to accomplish. The public has a right to access information from the CBC as it receives funding from the government. The public has a right to find out the salaries of the very highest paid individuals in government institutions. These are important things the public needs to know.

That being said, we have looked at Bill C-461 and we believe it requires certain modifications. Therefore, the government will propose amendments. These amendments will not hinder or detract from the main goal that Bill C-461 tries to achieve.

Before I describe these amendments the government will propose, I will begin by spending a bit of time describing for the House what Bill C-461 seeks to achieve. I will first focus on the part of Bill C-461 that relates to the CBC.

Currently the Access to Information Act only allows a requester to access records that deal with the general administration of the CBC. Only requests that deal with such records will be considered and processed by the CBC. As a result, any record that contains information that relates to the journalistic, creative or programming activities of the CBC are excluded from coverage by the Access to Information Act. This means that if the CBC receives an access request that involves any records containing information that is journalistic, creative or programming activities, these records are not even processed as the access regime simply does not apply to them.

Generally speaking, broad exclusions are undesirable in an access to information regime from the perspective of openness and transparency. The current exclusion for the CBC is a problem because it excludes too much information. It is unclear and it also raises problems of interpretation and of application. In fact, it led the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics to undertake a study of the CBC's application of the exclusion. It also led to a court dispute between CBC and the Information Commissioner. I will come back to this later. Bill C-461 proposes to replace this problematic exclusion with an exemption, which will be more beneficial to the access regime.

When I say that the current exclusion covers too much, the point I am trying to make is that not all of the CBC's journalistic, creative or programming records are so sensitive that they deserve to be excluded from coverage by the Access to Information Act. However, I am certainly not suggesting that these CBC records should automatically be disclosed to a requester. On the contrary, Bill C-461 proposes that the CBC can protect these records with an exemption that can be used at its discretion.

The exemption would contain an injury test specific to CBC. That injury test would allow the head of the CBC to decide to protect the information from disclosure if it was determined that disclosure would be prejudicial to the CBC' s journalistic, creative or programming independence.

These activities are at the core of the CBC's mandate as a broadcaster and it is recognize that disclosure of information about such activities may hamper the CBC's ability to function in such a competitive environment. The requirements to demonstrate harm to a category of activities in order to protect information from disclosure is the type of exercise that many government institutions already perform on a large number of federal government records in the course of responding to access requests.

There is a secondary benefit to the changes proposed by Bill C-461 with regards to the CBC. It will allow for a very important review of the role by the Information Commissioner, an independent officer of Parliament with the responsibility of overseeing the application of the Access to Information Act. Review by the Information Commissioner of CBC's records was the subject of the dispute I mentioned earlier. The exemption for records of the CBC that Bill C-461 proposes will make it crystal clear that the Information Commissioner can carry out her crucial oversight role in relation to the CBC.

I will speak now about an exclusion for confidential journalistic sources of the CBC. While I have spoken now about the problems caused by an overly broad exclusion, there is no doubt that an exclusion offers the highest level of protection for information. There are some limited and specific categories of information that should be covered by a targeted, well-defined exclusion.

With respect to Bill C-461, it is the government's belief that information that would reveal the identity of confidential journalistic sources should continue to be excluded from the act.

When we previously spoke about Bill C-461, we noted that the ability to protect the identify of confidential journalistic sources was a pillar of journalism. Individuals who are confidential sources of information are understandably nervous about being identified. If a broadcaster cannot offer them complete guarantee of anonymity, they will go to another broadcaster or journalist.

As Bill C-461 is currently drafted, it would not allow the CBC to provide its confidential journalistic sources with an ironclad guarantee of continued anonymity. This is because the proposed new exemption in Bill C-461 contains an injury test that can result in their identity being revealed if the test is not met and will allow the Information Commissioner to review documents that identify them.

The position that we are taking with regard to the confidential journalistic sources is consistent with the 2011 Federal Court of Appeal decision on this matter. The court considered the CBC's exclusion and concluded that for journalistic sources, the exclusion was absolute and the Information Commissioner could not examine such information.

Bill C-461, with the amendment proposed by the government, would essentially reflect the outcome of the decision of the Federal Court of Appeal. I will stress that both the CBC and the Information Commissioner expressed satisfaction with the outcome of that decision.

I will speak now about disclosure of information on officers or employees of government institutions.

The next area where Bill C-461 would seek to increase openness and accountability is with regard to the expenditures of public money. Bill C-461 would increase openness and accountability by requiring more disclosure on expenditures in two areas: one would be the reimbursement for work-related expenses received by public servants; and the other would be the exact amount received by the highest paid individuals in government institutions.

Let me start with the issue of exact salaries.

In the public sector, job classifications are accompanied by a salary range within which someone is paid. Where they specifically fall within that range depends upon a number of factors, including time spent in the position and performance reviews.

Until now, the only information regarding salaries that could be made available to an access requester was the salary ranges of individuals enquired about. This salary range, along with other disclosable information, was enough to give a requester a good idea of how much an individual was remunerated by the government. We believe that being able to obtain salary ranges for the majority of public servants pursuant to an access to information request is appropriate.

In 2006 the coverage of the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act was expanded to a number of crown corporations. This change was brought forward with the Federal Accountability Act. Information on parent crown corporations and their wholly owned subsidiaries is now accessible under the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act. As a result, the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act now include a number of government institutions whose employees and officials are much higher paid than the vast majority of civil servants. We support the idea put forward in Bill C-461, that the highest paid individuals in the public sphere should have their exact salaries disclosed.

However, we propose an amendment to permit the disclosure of the exact income of those individuals that exceeds the highest level of the deputy minister level. This is a more practical level to administer than pledging the threshold in the middle of the deputy minister classification as is currently in Bill C-461. It also better reflects the intention of disclosing the income of the very highest paid individuals.

This is a sensible amendment as it crystallizes the fundamental idea that if an individual, in the course of their employment, incurs an expense and is compensated for that expense by the government, then that information should no longer be treated as personal information. The more noted expenses, when they are paid back to the employee, will be known by all. It is important to be transparent because we want the government to be money wise and only spend money where it is necessary.

Both the provisions of Bill C-461 requesting exact salaries and reimbursement of expenses go toward furthering transparency in the mechanisms of government. Individuals and institutions that are trusted with the public purse should be able to demonstrate where and how money is being spent.

The government supports Bill C-461, with the amendments I have described, because it would go toward achieving the transparency and accountability sought.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I have served with the member for Edmonton—St. Albert on various committees, including in the last Parliament when we served together on occasion on the justice committee. I respect his work because he speaks his mind and his opinions are based on his values. However, just because I respect his approach to Parliament, it does not mean that I always agree with him and this is a case where I do not agree with him and am opposed to this bill. In trying to figure out where I stood on this bill, I did a bit of an analysis, which I would like to share with everybody today.

The first step is to look at what the bill would do. I want to focus in on section 68.1 of the Access to Information Act. Section 68.1 reads:

This Act does not apply to any information that is under the control of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that relates to its journalistic, creative or programming activities, other than information that relates to its general administration.

There is an exclusion here. Why the exclusion? These sections are drafted to ensure that a public broadcaster's administrative functions are not excluded from the reach of FOI, or freedom of information, and accountability. It is the program and content activities for the public broadcaster that need to be distinguished and excluded. It is an acknowledgement of the separation between media activities and other activities as a crown corporation. This bill proposes to amend the Access to Information Act to repeal that exclusion for CBC for information related to journalist, creative or programming activities and replaces it with an exception.

When considering a section like this, it is useful to compare ourselves to other jurisdictions to see what is happening in similar situations in other countries. The public policy goal of an exclusion like this one is to ensure public accountability, while protecting independence and integrity. Let us take a look at the other jurisdictions to see how they strike that balance.

We have heard that other countries have similar legislation, like Australia, and have had this legislation for years. In fact, it has been well over 20 years.

Since 2000, the Irish public broadcaster, RTÉ, has been subject to the Irish freedom of information act in relation to its administrative activities, but it is excluded in relation to a range of material, including information gathered or recorded for “journalistic or programme content purposes, whether or not a programme is produced on the basis of such information, or is broadcast”. RTÉ's exclusion also extends to other activities like the identification of sources of information, editorial decision making about program and schedule content and post-transmission internal review and analysis of any program or schedule of programs broadcast.

Since the U.K.'s freedom of information act was enacted in 2000, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, has been subject to the act except in respect of information held for purposes of “journalism, art or literature”.

The first step of the analysis is to explain the purpose of this exclusion and it seems we are on the same page as other countries with public broadcasters.

Let us look at the change and figure out what exactly this change would do. I will read clause 18.2 of Bill C-461, which states:

The head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation may refuse to disclose any record requested under this Act if the disclosure could reasonably be expected to prejudice the Corporation’s journalistic, creative or programming independence.

It is important to note that when the Federal Court of Appeal, when it has been asked to review whether documents should be released, it has settled matters such that both the Information Commissioner and the CBC have supported. At best, this bill is gratuitous. The access to information system was already working and the CBC was often proactive in its disclosure of information when it came to things like expenses. At worst, this bill is an attack on the CBC's viability as a journalistic source that puts its investigations at risk by jeopardizing its ability to protect its sources.

The attempt to reverse this burden of proof, to force the CBC to prove that a request is “injurious”, is part of an ideological attack on public broadcasting in Canada. Further, the protection that will remain is defined narrowly, too narrowly to adequately protect journalistic work. These changes put an unjustified burden on the CBC and will make the CBC vulnerable to unfair and compromising requests, not to mention expensive legal battles.

What is clear is that the integrity of a journalistic entity that is free of corporate influence is in jeopardy.

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression has weighed in with a statement. If people are listening at home, they can find that statement on the group's website. In its statement, it writes that Bill C-461 would:

...significantly weaken the CBC’s ability to deliver a key component of its mandate: carrying out public service journalism and creating programming completely independent from the government. That mandate was given to the CBC by Parliament decades ago and remains in force. To carry it out, CBC journalists must be able to conduct research and prepare programs without pressure to disclose the results prematurely or surrender operational details. The corporation must be able to acquire broadcasting rights and creative content without being required to disclose negotiating positions or strategy. In this respect, arm’s-length public broadcasters differ from other government departments. That is why other parliamentary democracies protect these broadcasters with exclusions like the one current in section 68.1 of the ATIA. Canada should do no less.

The CJFE goes on to describe what effect this attack on public journalism would have on the quality and breadth of news Canadians would be able to expect from the CBC. They say:

...what whistleblower would approach a CBC reporter? How could CBC journalists in good faith promise to protect their sources? How, both commercially and ethically, could the CBC sustain any investigative journalism if the process and the research could be revealed to CBC competitors or to the subjects of CBC investigations? In fact, a chill would fall upon CBC journalists and the broadcaster’s ability to produce journalism with integrity would be seriously jeopardized. A bill that ostensibly aims to increase accountability would destroy the public broadcaster’s ability to hold government and the powerful to account.

I have heard some of the debate in the House in relation to Bill C-461 over the past couple of months, and certain Conservative members have come forward to say that the bill does not single out the CBC. I beg to differ. The bill is called the CBC and public service disclosure and transparency act, so it is pretty clear that it is about the CBC. It applies to the CBC and no other organization. That is pretty settled.

I have also heard statements saying that the bill is not an attack on the CBC. The member who brought the private member's bill forward is on the record saying:

I don’t know that we need a national broadcaster in 2011.... We have to wean them off...of the taxpayer's dollar....

In my opinion, this has nothing to do with transparency and everything to do with attacking the CBC.

Journalistic freedom is the foundation of democracy. It is unconscionable that the Conservatives are attacking public investigation. The CBC has an important role to play in investigative journalism. My New Democrat colleagues and I believe in a strong and independent public broadcaster. It is essential that the CBC remain a trusted news source on which Canadians can rely.

Bill C-461 should be defeated.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to rise and speak at second reading of Bill C-461, an act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act (disclosure of information) or, as the bill's short title makes clear, the CBC and public service disclosure and transparency act.

I would like to respond to some of the criticism I have heard tonight. The bill would actually bring the CBC in line with other crown corporations. Exemptions that exist for the CBC that have been abused would be eliminated.

There are many reasons to support the bill. I would like to take a moment to highlight some of mine. As someone who has used Canada's access to information laws to review government spending, I am already familiar with the importance of such laws to get at information either that governments may report to the public out of context or, at worst, that they wish to hide.

These laws are important because they hold governments accountable. How exactly does this happen? When decisions are subject to review, individuals throughout the public service are much more likely to follow rules and reflect on how tax money is spent. When they do not, the results cannot be quietly locked away safe from public review. For this reason, sunshine in government is a useful disinfectant for unscrupulous behaviour.

Let us look at the bill's specific reforms. First and importantly, as the bill's name suggests, it would bring greater accountability to the CBC. I believe it is the duty of government to be transparent and open. Canadians need to know that when household income is taken away from them in taxes it is being put to good use. Yet a problem currently exists. There is a loophole in the Access to Information Act, which was created for the CBC, whereby this news, culture and entertainment company can refuse to release any documents it believes are inadmissible.

Aside from going through the courts, there is no adequate oversight review. This loophole has been exploited by the CBC to refuse replying to information requests. Specifically, the act currently states that:

This Act does not apply to any information that is under the control of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that relates to its journalistic, creative or programming activities, other than information that relates to its general administration.

This means the CBC is not required to provide any transparency except for information about its general administration. However in turn, it is expected, actually required, to report on what is covered. Yet the CBC has erroneously applied its exemption broadly and at times refused to provide information that it is obliged to, in my opinion. It has used that clause to delay or deny the provision of information even to the Information Commissioner, whose job it is to determine whether or not Canadians have a right to access requested information.

In this case, the matter went to the court. Both the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal agreed that CBC was wrong to withhold certain documents from the Information Commissioner. The courts also found that the wording of that section of the Access to Information Act is less clear than it could be and “a recipe for controversy”, which is exactly what it delivered.

The sponsor of this bill is responding to a flaw in the current law as identified by the courts. The Information Commissioner is correctly asking that greater onus be placed on the CBC to demonstrate that it could actually be harmed by releasing certain exempted documents, and the public interest should be weighed in each decision.

The NDP member for Halifax just stated that we are actually already on the same page as other countries, but that is not quite accurate. Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom all allow independent bodies to review documents held by their public broadcasters. I believe it is time Canada did the same, because right now under the law, it is the CBC that acts as judge and jury in these cases. If people want to appeal, they have to go to the courts, which is expensive and time consuming. However, neither the commissioner nor any other taxpayer should be forced to go to the Federal Court to resolve disputes.

Bill C-461 would redefine the exemption clause for the CBC with what is called an injury test. This means that unless disclosing the information could reasonably be expected to prejudice CBC journalistic, creative or programing independence, the information could not be withheld. Also, in line with other areas of the federal government, the CBC would not decide what is covered and what is not.

Explicitly giving an officer of Parliament, in this case the Information Commissioner, the authority to adjudicate whether or not this injury test is met is wise public policy because it would ensure that an independent third party ruled on what could or could not be made available to the public. This would help avoid the possibility of lengthy litigation processes that could result in further information being effectively denied through delay.

In effect, what both the member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe and the member for Halifax are stating today is that they do not trust the Information Commissioner to resolve these disputes; yet the Information Commissioner looks at all sorts of confidential government documents and in those cases is trusted to decide what is to be released and what is not to be released.

I believe this clause would not expose media sources to prying eyes or impact the CBC's independence, and frankly, we do not want it to.

If anyone argues the CBC should be exempt, as I have heard tonight, I would ask why others should not be exempt. I ask that rhetorically, because I do not believe federal government agencies should be exempt from oversight. Supporters of the CBC, of which there are many, might believe the mother corporation is in a unique position compared to other crown corporations, but it is not. At the end of the day it spends public dollars, and Parliament must hold all such agencies, departments and crown corporations accountable without fear or favour.

Second, the bill would amend the Privacy Act to allow for the public disclosure of specific salaries and responsibilities of anybody who earns more than $188,600 from the federal government.

Nova Scotia and Ontario require the disclosure of the name, salary and job title of anybody making $100,000 or more from the respective provincial governments. These sunshine lists hold those governments accountable for the salaries given to the top bureaucrats, civil servants and anybody else who earns six figures or more per year from the government. Manitoba, incidentally, sets its transparency level at a mere $50,000.

My own province of New Brunswick has a disclosure limit at $60,000. What is more, employees receiving in excess of $10,000 in retirement are subject to public disclosure. These numbers are reported annually, and this has been a good thing for taxpayers and open government.

Right now the legislation of the Government of Canada only allows for the disclosure of a very broad, very vague and almost entirely unhelpful salary range.

As my hon. colleague, the member for Edmonton—St. Albert, found out, the salary range for the current CEO of CBC is somewhere between $358,400 and $422,000. However in addition, generous bonuses can be paid to the CBC president and other civil servants. At most, bonuses in the federal system can reach 39% of the basic salary, yet taxpayers have no idea if a bonus was paid or what amount was paid.

I will note that, again, when my hon. colleague from Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe set his threshold level on behalf of the government he could not even bring himself to tell us what that level would be, so let me tell the House. If we were to go with the top end, as the government is proposing, it would mean a disclosure level at about $444,000, which is a level that would effectively neuter this legislation.

All my colleagues in the House, as well as other places, are required to disclose their salaries. They are public knowledge, and rightfully so. I believe the amount in this legislation is set too high. Instead, it should start at the rate of pay for members of Parliament, which is currently $157,731, an amount incidentally that has MPs already in the top 2% of all Canadian income earners. This figure is well higher than the minimum limits we see in provinces with sunshine laws.

With the passage of the bill, Canadians would be able to shed new light into some of the currently dark corners in the civil service. This is not to suggest something untoward is happening in the corners that are exempt from public oversight, but the fact is that we do not know. We and all taxpayers have a right as citizens to ask and receive answers. Taxpayers are, after all, the ones footing the bills. I hope no person elected to this chamber will argue that some areas of government ought to be exempt from accountability.

That is why I will be supporting Bill C-461, and that is why I hope my hon. colleagues will do the same.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Before I recognize the hon. member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, I must inform her that she will have only about six minutes remaining for her speech so that there is enough time for the right of reply.

The hon. member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, since I have only six minutes to speak to Bill C-461, I would simply like to say that I am strongly opposed to it.

In my opinion, it is another ridiculous, ideology-driven bill, which the Conservatives are using to muzzle institutions that are not to their liking. Under the guise of increasing transparency at the CBC, the Conservatives are using this bill to weaken the public broadcaster.

The bill's sponsor, the member for Edmonton—St. Albert, already shared his true feelings during the last election when he said the following to a local chamber of commerce:

I don’t know that we need a national broadcaster in 2011. … We have to wean them off … of the taxpayer’s dollar....

In December 2011, he told The Globe and Mail that he and other Conservative members were urging cabinet ministers to make more aggressive cuts to the CBC. What the Conservatives are really trying to do with this bill is dismantle the crown corporation.

We need to understand that this underhanded attack on the public broadcaster is widely supported in Conservative circles and by this government. In June 2003, when the Broadcasting Act was undergoing a thorough review at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, the Canadian Alliance—the precursor to the Conservative Party—clearly stated its policy on the public broadcaster in a dissenting report that said: “We would significantly reduce CBC operating subsidy by commercialization of CBC television.”

The Prime Minister himself has said on several occasions that he wanted the CBC to get to the point where it no longer needed parliamentary subsidies. In May 2004, for example, he made the following statement:

I’ve suggested that government subsidies in support of CBC’s services should be to those things that…do not have commercial alternatives.

As we can see, the Conservatives' aversion to the public broadcaster is in their DNA. The Conservatives think that the ideal public broadcaster is a dying, insignificant and insipid broadcaster. It is also important to note that the Conservatives started undermining the public broadcaster as soon as they had a majority government. In 2012, they announced $200 million in ideological cuts to CBC/Radio-Canada. These cuts had an impact on the quality and quantity of services, on both the information and the entertainment sides of things. Let me give you a few examples.

The mandate of RDI and Espace Musique was reduced in the regions. Regional programming was affected, especially in French-language minority communities. Regional stations' music libraries will be eliminated. Broadcasting by all general television stations will be centralized, and half the air time reserved for the regions on Espace Musique will be cut.

Of course, programming will get hit. On French television, dramatic series will have fewer episodes, there will be fewer major productions and management intends to reduce RDI's production costs. I should also mention that proposals for specialized sports stations and children's programming will be scrapped. There has also been a lot of disruption to CBC radio.

Canada's international influence also melted like snow in the hot sun when the government axed Radio Canada International. In all, 650 people will lose their jobs by 2015, including 243 employees of the French service. When the Conservatives brought down their budget last week, they took the opportunity to further reduce the CBC's budget by cutting an additional $42 million.

The NDP believes in a strong, independent public broadcaster funded in part through ad revenues and in part by parliamentary votes in recognition of the service it provides to Canadians in terms of sharing local information and promoting our cultural wealth.

The Conservatives' budget cuts are forcing the CBC to rely more and more on ad revenues and to operate like a commercial broadcaster. The government is asking the public broadcaster to compete with major conglomerates such as Bell Media, CTV and Quebecor, without ensuring that there is a level playing field.

I would like the sponsor of the bill to answer the following question: if his real objective is transparency, why should the CBC be the only one to have to disclose its production costs? Why not ask the same of private broadcasters, who also receive public funds?

I oppose this bill, which is a backdoor attack against the CBC, because Bill C-461 targets the capacity of the crown corporation to remain competitive and independent. What is more, this bill is unnecessary since the crown corporation has significantly improved its access to information practices since the 2006 bill on government accountability. Members will recall that it was through the collaboration of the NDP and the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre that the CBC was brought under the Access to Information Act. I want to reiterate my opposition to this bill and my support for the CBC and the work that it does.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank all hon. members from all sides of the House who have participated in the debate regarding private member's Bill C-461.

Let me start by dispelling some of the concerns from my friends from the New Democratic Party. This bill is not an attack on the CBC. I wish they would assess the statute on its face rather than developing conspiracy theories as to why we are promoting it.

Section 68.1 of the current Access to Information Act has been determined by two courts, including the Federal Court of Appeal, to be unworkable. It creates an exclusion and then an exemption to that exclusion, which is a recipe for controversy. It led to expensive litigation and ultimately the Federal Court of Appeal and the federal trial court agreeing with the Information Commissioner that the Information Commissioner must be able to see the documents in order to determine whether disclosure is appropriate.

I listened intently to my friend from Halifax, who did actually read the bill before she spoke. She was curious as to why an exclusion is not the best way to protect the independent broadcaster. The reason is quite clear. It is section 36 of the Access to Information Act that sets out the powers of the Information Commissioner, and they are broad. She may summon and enforce the appearance of persons. She may receive affidavits, take evidence on oath, and she can compel the production of documents. More than difficult, it is borderline impossible to create an exclusion that could coexist with the broad powers of the Information Commissioner that are set out in section 36.

What is the way to balance the rights and needs of an independent public broadcaster and the law that says the Information Commissioner ought to be the one to arbitrate disputes? It is the prejudice test. I did not make up the prejudice test. The prejudice test was cited by the Information Commissioner before the access and ethics committee when she testified at its study on section 68.1. Section 68.1 is so flawed that a standing committee of Parliament did an entire study on it. The Information Commissioner recommended a prejudice test, such that if it can be shown that release of the documents would be injurious to a party's independence then disclosure is inappropriate.

It was interesting to hear the comments from the member for Winnipeg Centre. He talked about what cabinet would think about this bill if it came to committee. Then we heard from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice that the government was going to propose amendments to the bill. They do not want to disclose the salaries of DMs 1, 2, 3 and 4 or the comparable salaries of any other government appointments. If I were a member of the opposition, I would think very seriously as to why the government was going to propose amendments to this bill to exclude all income levels under and less than the DM 4 level.

With respect to this bill, my friend from New Brunswick had the most sage speech. As many members know, he was the former director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and understands very well that the concepts of transparency and openness are fundamental to democracy. We in this chamber are members of Parliament. Our job is to hold the government to account; that is, the departments, the agencies and the crown corporations. We cannot hold government to account when government institutions withhold information from us or from other agencies or from other Canadians who are requesting it. Knowledge is power and the only way we can get knowledge is if we have access to the information.

Lastly, this is far from an attack on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The salary disclosure requirements of this bill are to be applied in the entire federal public service. CBC is in no way being singled out. Transparency is not the enemy of a public institution, far from it. Transparency leads to trust. There is trust that there is proper stewardship over public resources. The people at CBC should want to disclose. They should want this legislation so that Canadians can once again have the trust that they are the proper stewards over public resources.

I encourage all members to support Bill C-461, and in an unamended form, when it goes to committee.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It being 7:04 p.m., the time provided for debate has expired.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Pursuant to Standing Order 93, the division stands deferred until Wednesday, March 27, 2013, immediately before the time provided for private members' business.