Bill C-58 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Access to Information Act to, among other things,
(a) authorize the head of a government institution, with the approval of the Information Commissioner, to decline to act on a request for access to a record for various reasons;
(b) authorize the Information Commissioner to refuse to investigate or cease to investigate a complaint that is, in the Commissioner’s opinion, trivial, frivolous or vexatious or made in bad faith;
(c) clarify the powers of the Information Commissioner and the Privacy Commissioner to examine documents containing information that is subject to solicitor-client privilege or the professional secrecy of advocates and notaries or to litigation privilege in the course of their investigations and clarify that the disclosure by the head of a government institution to either of those Commissioners of such documents does not constitute a waiver of those privileges or that professional secrecy;
(d) authorize the Information Commissioner to make orders for the release of records or with respect to other matters relating to requesting or obtaining records and to publish any reports that he or she makes, including those that contain any orders he or she makes, and give parties the right to apply to the Federal Court for a review of the matter;
(e) create a new Part providing for the proactive publication of information or materials related to the Senate, the House of Commons, parliamentary entities, ministers’ offices, government institutions and institutions that support superior courts;
(f) require the designated Minister to undertake a review of the Act within one year after the day on which this enactment receives royal assent and every five years afterward;
(g) authorize government institutions to provide to other government institutions services related to requests for access to records; and
(h) expand the Governor in Council’s power to amend Schedule I to the Act and to retroactively validate amendments to that schedule.
It amends the Privacy Act to, among other things,
(a) create a new exception to the definition of “personal information” with respect to certain information regarding an individual who is a ministerial adviser or a member of a ministerial staff;
(b) authorize government institutions to provide to other government institutions services related to requests for personal information; and
(c) expand the Governor in Council’s power to amend the schedule to the Act and to retroactively validate amendments to that schedule.
It also makes consequential amendments to the Canada Evidence Act and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

Access to Information Act

[Scott Brison, Liberal, President of the Treasury Board]

moved that Bill C-58, an act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud today to discuss Bill C-58, an act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

This legislation, which I introduced on June 19, is built on a foundation of work by many people through consultations: parliamentarians, the Information Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner, important stakeholders, and, of course, Canadian citizens. All have strong views, sometimes conflicting, as to what we ought to do to modernize this 34-year-old act.

I would like to thank each of them for their careful consideration of the issues involved in updating our access to information regime.

The Liberal Party has spent over a decade defending and strengthening the principles of openness and transparency, both in government and in opposition. In fact, I remember when I served in the Right Hon. Paul Martin's cabinet. That was the first time a prime minister required the proactive disclosure of ministers' expenses. In fact, Mr. Speaker, you were a colleague in that same cabinet.

Later, in opposition, under the leadership of the current Prime Minister, our Liberal caucus was the first to proactively disclose parliamentarians' expenses. Now we are bringing this ongoing effort toward openness and transparency to government.

On day one, our Prime Minister made the ministers' mandate letters public, for the first time ever. This week, when I was in New York at the UN General Assembly, the CEO of the global organization Open Government Partnership told me that making public ministerial mandate letters is a real game changer that is going to raise the bar globally in terms of other countries.

Ministers are no longer just accountable to the Prime Minister for their mandates. Today, having our mandate letters public means that we are more accountable to Parliament, and of course, are more accountable to Canadian citizens.

That was just the beginning. Within our first two days of government we unmuzzled government scientists and restored the mandatory long-form census. All these measures are consistent with our drive toward openness and transparency and providing higher-quality information to Canadians.

Our actions are being recognized by global organizations. In March we were elected to the steering committee of the Open Government Partnership for the first time. This week we agreed to take on the role of co-chair of the OGP. This is the world's largest multilateral organization dedicated to open, transparent, and accountable government.

As we developed this first set of legislative reforms of the Access to Information Act, we have continued to be guided by the principle that government information belongs to the people it serves. If anything, it is truer today than ever before.

The Access to Information Act, in 1983, first enshrined in law the following principles: that citizens have a right to government information, that transparency makes government more accountable and responsive to the needs of citizens, and that access to information allows citizens to participate meaningfully in the democratic process and hold their government to account.

The amendments we are proposing to the act will strengthen its original purpose in a way that reflects today's technologies, policies, and legislation. Now more than ever, open government is good government. We want to work with parliamentarians, independent officers of Parliament, and stakeholders to ensure that this first major Access to Information Act reform in three decades reflects that intention.

A lot has changed since the ATI Act first came into force. Thirty-four years ago, government information was paper-based and stored in file cabinets.

Since then, information technology and our communications infrastructure have been revolutionized and personalized.

Over the same period, the volume of information collected and held by government has grown, and the Internet has made it easier for the government to make large amounts of information widely available.

The Access to Information Act played an important part in bringing about a change in public expectations. It was in fact ground-breaking.

Since the act became law, in fact, more than 750,000 information requests have been processed. That is 85 requests every working day for more than three decades. Since 1983, the number of requests has grown by an average of 13% annually. In fact, 2015-16 saw more than 75,000 requests. I would like us to consider that number: 75,000 information requests in one year. That represents almost 10% of the overall number of information requests processed since 1983, so demand for information is actually growing.

Clearly, there is a rising demand for government information and government transparency. That demand has strained government, and it has frustrated Canadians who are accessing information.

We have heard the complaints about government delays in responding to requests or about denied requests. We believe that the changes we are making will help address some of these issues. However, in 2015-16, for example, 64% of all completed information requests were answered within the initial statutory time limit of 30 days. That number jumps to 86% if we consider the requests closed within an extension period provided for within the act. More than nine million pages were processed in 2015-16, and more than 80% of the records were disclosed either in full or in part.

In some cases, exemptions were invoked for valid reasons, including the privacy of personal information, national security, and the ability of the public service to give full and frank advice to government.

Nonetheless, to say that reforming the 1983 act has been a long time coming would certainly be an understatement.

That is why we are modernizing the act today. This is not just a one-off exercise that might have to wait another 34 years for an update. We are making it law that there will be regular reviews of the act. We began these efforts just over a year ago. In May 2016, we issued an interim directive that enshrined the principle of open by default. This refers to a culture shift across government in which data and information are increasingly released as a matter of course unless there are specific reasons not to do so.

This culture of openness helps Canadians engage with their government on policies, programs, and services.

We believe that good public policy comes out of conversations and consultations with Canadians and that it needs to be two-way communication. Even in the last few months since introducing this legislation, we have continued to engage the commissioners of information and privacy, along with many other experts on this subject. We paid close attention to the concerns raised, and I look forward to pursuing that conversation with this Parliament and with parliamentarians here today and in the coming weeks.

“Open by default” involves providing more information to the general public, engaging citizens in identifying issues and problems, and helping to develop solutions around them.

The interim directive we issued in May 2016 also eliminated all fees for access to information requests, apart from the standard $5 fee, and directed the release of information in more user-friendly and shareable digital formats whenever possible. Now is the time to take more steps on this path of open government.

The legislative package we have introduced proposes amendments that would further improve Canadians’ access to government information.

To begin with, the amendments would create a new part of the act relating to proactive disclosure.

Proactive publication puts into practice the principle of “open by default”.

With modern technologies making it easier to share information in real time, we are looking at new ways to meet Canadians' expectations by sharing government information more quickly and automatically while relieving some of the pressure from our demand-based system.

This approach would build on current best practices, and apply consistent requirements for the publication of information across the government.

It would apply to more than 240 government departments, agencies, and crown corporations. It would include the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices, senators and members of Parliament, institutions that support Parliament, administrative institutions that support the courts, and more than 1,100 judges of the superior courts.

We would be putting in law the proactive publication of the travel and hospitality expenses of ministers and their staff as well as of senior officials across government; contracts over $10,000 and all contracts issued by members of Parliament and senators; grants and contributions over $25,000; mandate letters and revised mandate letters; briefing packages for new ministers and deputy ministers; lists of briefing notes for ministers and deputy ministers, including the titles of the notes and their tracking numbers; and the parliamentary binder used for question period and committee appearances. We developed this list by examining some of the most sought after documents in access to information requests.

We expect, in fact, that this approach would guide us over time in terms of expanding proactive disclosure. In other words, if there are certain categories of information that are frequently being requested through the demand-based system, that would be a signal to our government and to future governments that we ought to consider proactively disclosing those categories as we move forward.

This will lead to better public understanding of government decision-making, fostering more participation and public trust in government. We also understand that proactive publication does not absolve us of our responsibility to strengthen the request-based system.

That is why we are also developing a new plain-language guide that will help provide requesters with clear explanations for any exemptions and exclusions. We will be investing in tools to make processing information requests more efficient. We will be allowing federal institutions that have the same minister to share request-processing services to achieve greater efficiency.

Because one of the most common complaints we have heard has been directed at the consistency of how the act is applied across government institutions, we will invest in better government training to get a common and consistent interpretation and application of ATI rules across the government.

We are also following the guidance of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

We are moving to help government institutions weed out what are genuinely bad-faith requests that put significant strain on the system, slowing responses for everyone else. Repetitive, vexatious requests can gum up access to information processes while providing little new information, and as such, can do a disservice to all Canadians.

Federal institutions spent more than $64 million in 2015-16 to cover the direct cost of administering the act, and this government wants those resources spent efficiently and effectively. Our intent is to ensure that no government, ours or any future government, can abuse this provision. Let me be clear. A large or broad request, or one that causes the government discomfort, does not of itself represent bad faith on the part of a requester.

We need to get this right. We recognize that while this tool is needed to significantly improve the system, everything from sound policy to proper oversight must be done to prevent its abuse. I have faith that this House and this Parliament and the work that will be done at the committee can help us achieve that objective.

We are not stopping there. The proposed amendments would also give the Information Commissioner new powers.

These include the ability to order the release of government records. This was a power long sought by successive Information Commissioners. We are also giving her office more financial resources to do its job.

This is a significant step forward.

We will change the commissioner's role from that of an ombudsperson to that of an authority, with the legislative power to order government institutions to release records. These are significant reforms to our ATI system, but there will always be more we can do to strengthen the trust between citizens and their government.

That is why the reforms being proposed are only the first phase of our modernization of access to information.

In fact, the amendments legislate a review of the act every five years so that the law never becomes as outdated as it is today. The first review would begin within one year of this bill's receiving royal assent. In addition, through policy, we will require that departments regularly review the information being requested under the act. This is important because the trend analysis that we conduct on an ongoing basis will help us understand and increase the kinds of information that should be made more easily available, including through proactive disclosure. This analysis would also inform the five-year reviews and future changes to strengthen the act.

After 34 years, we are the first government to significantly revitalize Canada's access to information law and system. It is the most comprehensive access to information reform in a generation. As I said, these reforms are only the first phase. It is a work in progress to strengthen access to information and openness and transparency in Canada, not just for our government but for future governments. With the support of the House, we can continue to work together to modernize our access to information law and system and to make governments today and in the future more open, transparent, and accountable to Canadians.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the President of the Treasury Board's speech. It is interesting that he talked about openness and transparency in the House, but every time we submit an Order Paper question on the definition of the middle class, we do not get an answer. Every time we submit an access to information request, we do not get answer; it gets blacked out. None of that will change with this legislation. The government has refused to tell us the cost and impact on middle-class Canadians of the carbon tax.

How can the President of the Treasury Board claim this is an improvement to the laws when the government did not even touch any of the exemptions in the current ATIP law?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, there are two points to that question I would like to address.

First, because the Information Commissioner will have order-making power, if in fact a requester of information believes that the government's decision to refuse to provide the information was inappropriate or wrong, there will be an appeal process. If the Office of the Information Commissioner agrees with the requester of the information, the commissioner can order that the information be provided, and the government would have 30 years—or rather, 30 days—to provide the information. If it did not provide the information in 30 days, it would be violating the law. It would have 30 days to provide the information and if it chose not to, then it would have to challenge the Information Commissioner in a court of law, the decision ultimately being made by a judge. Government departments will be reticent to challenge the Information Commissioner in a court of law. That is a game-changer in and of itself.

As for exemptions, there are legitimate exemptions around things like privacy and national security, as examples, and cabinet confidence. In fact, the Supreme Court has recognized cabinet confidentiality as essential to good government. In Babcock v. Canada in 2002, the court said, “The process of democratic governance works best when Cabinet members charged with government policy and decision-making are free to express themselves around the Cabinet table unreservedly”.

I would disagree with my hon. colleague in that this legislation actually helps strengthen the weaknesses that he was concerned about and raised.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the President of the Treasury Board for introducing legislation after 34 years that would modernize this essential right to know legislation, as well as for saying that this is only a work in progress and that he will welcome input at the committee stage, presumably including amendments to this bill.

The Centre for Law and Democracy, like so many other groups, has claimed:

...the bill is far more conspicuous for what it fails to do, putting in place only one or at best one and one-half of the reforms called for by Canadians....

It does nothing to address the broad regime of exceptions (if anything, expanding its scope slightly).

Of course, it does not fix the massive loopholes that currently exist. In fact, it introduces a new one, which I will talk about later.

What confidence can Canadians have that this will truly reflect this new openness by default that the minister spoke of?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

First of all, the order-making power granted to the commissioner was called for initially by a parliamentary committee in 1987. That has been ignored by successive governments. However, when the commissioner now orders that information be provided by the government and, as such, agrees with the requester, the government will only have 30 days. If the government disagrees, the department would have to challenge the Information Commissioner in court, with the decision ultimately being made by a judge.

That is going to be a game-changer in terms of the application of this act and in addressing some of the concerns raised. In terms of the pre-existing exemptions, they are there whether for privacy, national security, or cabinet confidence. Those are legitimate.

I believe that the member was referring to the category of frivolous and vexatious complaints. That was actually a recommendation of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics of the House of Commons. It is one that is designed to apply to bad faith requests that gum up the system. The system can get bogged down by bad faith requests—for example, if an ex-spouse ATIPs his or her former spouse's work hours on a daily basis or their emails. I am not just pulling that out of the air. This is an actual example of the kind of request that would be made in bad faith. There is—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I ask the President of the Treasury Board to hold that thought for perhaps the next answer.

The hon. member for Haldimand—Norfolk.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the minister could explain something based on my colleague's previous question. He said that if a satisfactory answer is not given to a question, then the questioner has the opportunity to appeal. If an appropriate answer is not given with 30 days, at that point it can go to court. The problem is that by this time there still is no appropriate answer, and if it goes to court there is no timeline.

Is that what the minister may have been thinking of when he said it could take 30 years to get a response?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I misspoke, and I meant 30 days. The reality is that this is the first time the act has been updated in a significant way in 34 years.

The order-making power provision was first sought by a parliamentary committee 30 years ago in 1987. We are the first government to actually provide it. Again, the way it would work is that the government would be given, by the Information Commissioner in her order, 30 days to respond. If the government disagreed with that order, it has the ability to challenge it in court. This would not be done frivolously.

My hon. colleague was part of a cabinet that, in fact, was the first government in the history of the British Commonwealth to be found in contempt of Parliament for not providing information to this Parliament. We do not really feel that we will be taking lessons from her on this issue today.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the issue of order-making powers for the Information Commissioner. It is a relevant issue, because my office has spent three years trying to get the justice department to turn over that briefing notes on why it suppressed evidence going into the hearings of the survivors of the St. Anne's Residential School, suppressing evidence of serial pedophilia and torture against children in order to have the cases thrown out. The minister has ignored an order by the Information Commissioner to turn over these documents.

When we are talking about the justice department's role in suppressing evidence in legal hearings, is that vexatious or some kind of irritant to the government? Would that be under cabinet confidence? If the government decides to ignore orders from the Information Commissioner, what we can we do to hold the justice department of Canada to account? We are talking about the abuse of the rights of survivors of Indian residential schools by the department blacking out of thousands of pages of documents, which then protects the perpetrators. Will the minister say this is an abuse of the fundamental principles of the Access to Information Act?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, today the Information Commissioner does not have order-making powers. This is something that has been sought for over 30 years. This legislation would provide the commissioner with order-making powers for the first time.

I am not speaking specifically to the case presented by the hon. member. However, that case or any case could be reviewed by the commissioner. If a requester of information made a complaint to the Information Commissioner about a specific request, and if she sided or agreed with the requester and ordered the government to provide that information, it would have 30 days to do so. A department could challenge it in a court of law, but ultimately the decision would be made by a judge. I do not believe any department would challenge an order without reasonable belief that it could defend its position in a court of law.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, listening to the President of the Treasury Board speak, I think we should be breaking out the champagne for this once-in-a-lifetime change to the access to information law that will achieve everything. I heard him say that it is early in the day. I am sure he will make some time in the lobby behind us for other government members. However, I have bad news for them. The supposed openness and transparency law that the Liberals have introduced, where they faked themselves into thinking they have accomplished something, falls far short of what they promised during the election campaign. Also, according to the experts, it falls far short of what should have been achieved over this 30-year gap between when the ATIP law was introduced and the amendments they are proposing to make.

What is interesting is that we rise in the House in question period to ask questions that we never get answers to. The Liberals could have provided fulsome answers then. We have Order Paper questions asking for simple definitions that should be textbook, yet they fail to provide the answers for these Order Paper questions. These are privileges that each member of this House enjoys, and the government should be providing complete answers to those Order Paper questions. Therefore, it is no wonder that this access to information amendment it is proposing will fall far short of what should be achieved.

Many times I have heard the member for Carleton ask what the definition of “middle class” is and what the impact of the carbon tax would be. He has tried to get that information through the access to information laws. However, we never get that information from the government. What the Liberals are proposing today will never fix that. What is needed is a cultural change. I call this system that they are proposing the Potemkin ATIP system. It has all the window dressings, the image that is needed, but none of the changes they have promised to make will be in the guts of it.

I do have a Yiddish proverb, because I think it speaks volumes to what the government is proposing to do. It is, “The luck of an ignoramus is this: He doesn't know what he doesn't know.” I am not speaking with respect to the President of the Treasury Board, I am speaking of the government in general.

I will quote from the access to information law experts from the Centre for Law and Democracy, which noted a couple of disturbing elements in this bill.

It stated, “a large majority of the proactive publication obligations are already being implemented in practice by these bodies. While it is some progress to formalise these commitments, this is hardly groundbreaking”. I agree.

It goes on to state, and this is an important point, that the bill “fails to address the serious problem of delays in responding to requests. It does nothing to address the broad regime of exceptions....” That was my first question to the President of the Treasury Board.

It goes on to note that the bill “would also remove the obligation on public authorities to publish about the classes of records it holds, which is designed to facilitate the making of requests for access to information” in the first place. Therefore, that will be removed.

When I came here as a rookie member of this House, one of the very first things I did was to learn and understand how each department worked and the areas in which it specialized. I wanted to understand how to better keep the minister accountable. To do so, I looked for the type of information and the type of records the department was keeping. That was so I could better understand what types of records I could request through an access to information request if I did not get an answer to an Order Paper question or an answer in question period.

The Centre for Law and Democracy notes that section will be removed, which takes me back to my Yiddish proverb. If we do not know that a document exists, then how could we ever ask for it? It is interesting that the government is removing that one section. It is not just me saying that, but so is the Centre for Law and Democracy, which is the expert on this. It does analyses of all access to information laws in every jurisdiction in Canada, and it rates them. It is those experts who are saying that it falls short.

Who else is saying that it falls short? Robert Marleau, the former information commissioner from 2007 to 2008, stated, “there's no one [in government departments] to review what they choose not to [publish]”. This is contrary to the principles of the act. They put the commissioner out of the loop. If we requested briefing notes and parts of them had been blacked out, you had someone to appeal to. This is no longer the case. You cannot even ask the court. It is a step forward, two steps back.

Let us see what the Liberals say they have done. We have heard about mandate letters now being released to the public. It does not help if one does not follow the mandate letter and fulfill what is in it. It is just a letter, a piece of paper. It does not help us to understand anything. Also, I have news. The Alberta government has been releasing mandate letters for well over a decade. Therefore, it is not as if this is groundbreaking and setting some type of new frontier regarding access to information. Alberta has been doing it for years. I remember when the member for Calgary Confederation and the member for Calgary Signal Hill were in the provincial government, and they had mandate letters that were published. The difference is that they followed through with the contents of their mandate letters and were held accountable by the premier of Alberta for the contents. Here, they are not held accountable.

The other thing they say they will be doing is documentation on the training of new ministers, titles and reference numbers of briefing notes, development notes for question period, backgrounders for appearances before parliamentary committees, travel and hospitality expenditures, and contracts of more than $10,000. Other governments have been doing some of these things for a long time now, through freedom of information laws that are provincially based. These are not new frontiers. These are very basic documents.

Some of them are here. However, if they remove from the law the very basis of what type of records the department has to keep, how am I supposed to know that a record exists in the first place? It is like chasing a needle in a haystack a lot of times.

I have experienced this first-hand when doing access to information requests to the health department where I have been stalled out for lengthy periods of time. Sometimes I stumble upon new documents that I did not know even existed before. Then I do another access to information, and my staff and I continue in this manner. Many of the changes being proposed here will not end any of that.

It is hardly historic in terms of changes. There is an RTI rating, which is the methodology that assesses each access to information law to determine its score. The score is based on 150. On the RTI rating, according to the Centre for Law and Democracy, Canada will go from 90 to 92 points. That is a two-point increase. One would think after two years that the government could have cobbled together an amendment to the access to information law that would live up to the promises it made during the last election, because it has broken them here. It could do much better than a two-point increase in its score on access to information laws.

It is not as if Canada will be rising greatly. It is not as if the government did not know how to increase its score. It is not as if it did not have a comparator that it could look at, such as Serbia, which supposedly has a much better rate than we do.

Many experts in the field have said that there are issues, and I note in the law there are interesting oddities and amendments. One of them, and we have heard this before, is with regard to frivolous or vexatious claims for access to information requests. A department would be able to say that they cannot do that.

According to Policy Options, a well-respected think tank, the power to prevent such abuse is included in many ATI laws. However, that power should rest with the Information Commissioner, not the department that is subject to the request. If the department can determine what is frivolous and vexatious, then it can block any type of request it feels is frivolous and vexatious. It could up to the individual civil servant who receives the request.

Bill C-58 also includes a five-year review. The first five-year review would take place only a year after the legislation comes into force. Given the glacial pace of how legislation makes its way through the House and then to the Senate and then bounces back from the Senate, because the government does not really know what it is doing there, I do not think we would have a review of it before 2019, before the next election.

My other concern is that it does not have a sunset clause. Even the Bank Act has a sunset clause. It is set every five years. It forces the parliamentary committee to review the legislation through a mandatory review. It knows that it will sunset unless it provides feedback on its contents. I like the idea of mandatory reviews and sunset clauses in legislation, because it forces us, as parliamentarians, to review legislation on a consistent basis. When I worked as a staff member in the provincial legislature in Alberta, it was one of the things I kept pushing for in regulation and statutes with the minister I had the privilege of working for. I pushed that every single piece of legislation, regulation, should have that included, to mandatorily force members to review the legislation to make sure it still made sense, that the amendments that had been proposed in the last five years, and the improvements, were actually worth carrying on and being included in the final legislation.

I have a page from the Liberal policy platform from the last election. The Liberals promised many things on access to information, some of which they achieve here, and some which they absolutely do not. They said they would expand the powers and role of the Information Commissioner. They have done some of that. They also said that government data and information should be open by default, and that formats should be modern and easy to use. I have no problems with that. That is a great idea.

It is interesting to note that the previous President of the Treasury Board and the previous government started an open data, open government website, where people could download data on Excel spreadsheets. I know this, because we used them in the office that I worked in before. We downloaded bits of data, and used it to supplement Statistics Canada data that we were purchasing as well.

In this policy platform, the government talks about ensuring that the system continues to serve Canadians while it undertakes a full legislative review of the Access to Information Act every five years. I have been to many parliamentary committees where we get a cursory review.

In fact, on the small business tax change, the biggest tax change in a generation, the Liberals on the committee forced it through after we heard only six hours of testimony from witnesses. That was all the time allowed. The Carter commission took six years. If that is the standard the Liberals are going to go by, then I have worries about the mandatory five-year review. I have to wonder if in three or four years will we get six hours to review the legislation. Will the committee be stuffed with members from the Liberal side who will simply say that the committee will be given three hours every five years to figure it out and then they will be done with it? The Liberals have not lived up to the real change, the open and transparent government that they promised.

I will keep referring to the Centre for Law and Democracy, because it has produced a lot of information on the shortcomings and some of the improvements that it sees. There are a lot of shortcomings.

The centre also says that the bill fails to address the serious procedural problems, namely the highly discretionary power of public authorities to extend the initial 30-day limit for responses to requests. I have been the victim of this. I was told that I had asked for too many documents, or they were too difficult to get or too complicated. They tried to get me to pare down my request. That is when I knew I should keep pushing forward and get all of the documentation I was requesting.

With respect to the 30-day time limit for responding to requests, power has been applied with disturbing regularity they say, often to create very lengthy delays in responding to requests. On one access to information request, I was told it would take two years to respond. I reminded them that by then I may no longer be a member of the House and therefore the information they provide may be of limited use to me, which would be a shame.

There are a number of options for reducing official discretion in this area, for example, by requiring officials to obtain prior permission from the Information Commissioner for delays beyond the set period of 60 days. In fact, many access to information laws say that the government must respond within the 60-day time limit. That would be a vast improvement. No courts would be involved, and there would be no need to go to another body to get a document that has been lawfully requested. The documents would simply be released within 60 days.

There are hundreds of thousands of public servants who work for the federal government. Why can they not do a request within 60 days when a reasonable request for documents is made? Why should I, as a member of Parliament, need to go to a court to obtain them? I am not going to get questions answered in the House in question period or through an Order Paper question. My only recourse is to get documentation through access to information.

The commissioner would acquire new order-making powers, but they would be largely crippled and counter-productive. Ken Rubin, the CFE senior fellow who provided a critique on Ryerson University's website on Bill C-58, said it is counter-productive and largely crippled “because no amendments were put forward to change the numerous broad exemptions in the Access to Information Act that cut off access to [these] government records”.

If there are a bunch of exemptions and rules that can be used to not release documents for national security reasons, documents pertaining to cabinet confidences, which is perfectly legitimate, are things like third-party proprietary corporate information at all times really proprietary? It might be better to shed some light on the procurement process so that parliamentarians could better understand what is going on.

We have seen delay after delay, and huge costs associated with the government's failed procurement process. Maybe it is time to shine some light on the problem. The government did not do that in this legislation. It just did the trimmings on the edge, the Potemkin village that I talked about.

The exemptions still exist, and the exemptions are the core of the access to information law. The government has left them as they are so then it could always find an excuse not to release information, to black out information, and to not provide it under the exemptions.

I think the majority of Canadians interested in access to information were looking for the exemptions to be tweaked. The Liberals could have amended, diluted, or removed some of them to make it much easier to access this information.

Another point that Ken Rubin makes is that the Prime Minister has put forward other legislation that makes certain records off limits to the commissioner and the courts for review or their ability to order releases of information. One is the National Security and Intelligence Committee for Parliamentarians, again, on national security grounds. However, that can become overbroad and used as an excuse. We see this in some countries overseas, which use national security to limit access to all types of information, for all types of reasons. It is a blanket catch-all. I hope it does not become that way. However, for national security, I can see legitimate reasons for the government to deny access to information, such as because it would put Canadians at risk or it would put the national security of the country at risk.

The omnibus budget bill, Bill C-44, contains a section devoted to setting up the Canada infrastructure bank. This was a big point of contention in the last session. Section 28 gives the government the power to decide unilaterally what is privileged information, commercial, infrastructure, financial, and political transactions, with no independent review. It is an already controversial enough bill. With these provisions, we can see the government saying that this is a wonderful, new, once-in-a-generation, open and transparent access to information law. However, section 28 limits access to information on the Canada infrastructure bank.

The Liberals are putting exceptions in other bills, but not in the main bill, which should be of great concern to parliamentarians. If the exemptions are not put into the main ATI Act but are put into other legislation, then the government cannot claim to be open and transparent. I do not think anyone would claim that.

Another point Mr. Rubin makes is:

...one amendment in Bill C-58 also directly increases secrecy by expanding and broadening the legal definition of what is able to be exempt under solicitor-client relations.

The Liberals have put some wording around it so the Information Commissioner could have access to it, but they still broadened and expanded it, and Mr. Rubin details that.

Mr. Rubin also makes this point, overall, on Bill C-58, which supposedly would meet the government's promises made in the last election. He says:

It is a stopgap, government-controlled, limited administrative information system not subject to appeal to the information commissioner or the courts, containing a few sanitized offerings the government wants to provide.

I am a big believer in access to information laws. When I worked in the Alberta provincial government, the government there released information. Yes, it took a long time to meet every single requirement. Yes, there were administrative problems. Yes, not everybody was satisfied with the level of customer service they received from the FOIP office there. However, a lot of times it released information eventually and it embarrassed the government to no end. I was in a minister's office at the time, and sometimes it embarrassed our office. However, at least we knew people were getting the same information that we had. The briefing binders were perfectly available to people, and they could ask for the content of them. The only portions blacked out were portions that civil servants determined should not be released. We played absolutely no role in that.

I am sure members on the opposite side, and hopefully all members, will agree that access to information laws are part of our democratic process. People should have a right to get information. I totally agree with that. We cannot fight for the little guy, we cannot fight for the middle class, and then tell them they cannot know things that the government is doing or how it has came to a decision.

However, I will not be able to support the bill, because it does not meet with what the government said it would do during the last election. The Liberals fall far short of the majestic, historic promises they made. This is why I believe members on this side of the House should all oppose the bill. I look forward to continued debate on this.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to my colleague's arguments. I want to start with the frivolous and vexatious issue.

These are designed specifically for bad-faith requests. It is important to note that this recommendation actually came from House of Commons ETHI committee. Beyond that, eight provinces and three territorial governments have some variation of this, as does Australia, the U.K., and New Zealand.

It is also important to realize that people who have their requests denied on this basis will still be able to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner. The Information Commissioner now, with this legalisation, will have order-making power to have the government to provide that information.

First, with respect to the order-making power, the member sort of glossed over it and said that it was no big deal. If it were no big deal, why did the Harper Conservative government not do it in 10 years, even though it has been called for since 1987?

Second, with respect to mandate letters, the member said that making mandate letters public was no big deal. If it were no big deal to make mandate letters of cabinet ministers public, why did the Harper government never do it? In fact, making mandate letters public ensures that ministers are not only accountable for commitments to the Prime Minister but to Parliament and to government.

Third, the Conservative platform in 2006 pledged specifically to modernize the Access to Information Act and apply it to ministers' offices. Why did the Conservatives not make any of these changes, any of the strengthening to the Access to Information Act in almost 10 years in office?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, obviously the member knows I have not been in office for 10 years, so I cannot answer to what happened 10 years ago when I was still a student. However, it is interesting to note that the member is an esteemed veteran member of the House. I would reverse the question and ask him this: when he was a member of the Martin government, why did he not champion these changes then? We can keep going back in history.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the new member's enthusiasm, and I am delighted that a breath of fresh air seems to be blowing over the Conservative Party, but the truth is that his party was all about secrecy. The NDP introduced a whole bunch of bills based on the Information Commissioner's reports, and the Conservatives rejected them all.

Can we look forward to a change in tone over there?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. As he pointed out, I am indeed a new member.

There should be more access to information. That is my personal opinion, and I came to that conclusion while I was working for federal and provincial ministers. If we say that we are working for Canadians and the middle class, we have to nurture their economic dreams and help them achieve the goal of getting good jobs, but we also have to ensure their access to information that belongs to the government that is working for them. Those two things go hand in hand.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the Conservative member's comments with great interest. A lot of drive-by allegations was not based in fact. I want to make a point about two of those.

One is that this legislation would do nothing to address the issue of delays. A number of measures would directly address delays so there could be a more timely provision of information, things like removing vexatious and frivolous requests that bog down the system and enabling ministers that have two different areas or departments to share the resources so there can be more effective provision of information to requesters.

However, the one that really struck me was the comment about the member receiving blacked-out information requests. As an opposition member, I received a response to a freedom of information request that was pretty benign. It was about the 2010 Winter Olympics. The entire document was black sheets.

I would like the member to acknowledge and respond to my point that for the very first time the commissioner will have order-making powers. If there is that kind of specious blacking out that I experienced as a member of Parliament, the commissioner could order the information to be provided.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the way I read the legislation and how it applies is that if an exemption is put due to Canada-provincial relationships, national security reasons, proprietary corporate information, the Information Commissioner cannot force it through. Those are blanket exemptions.

Is the member saying that the way this legislation is written, if I ask for documentation and it is cabinet confidence, the Information Commissioner could actually overturn that and provide me with a cabinet confidence? The legislation does not say that. The exemptions have been left intact.

As far as I read the legislation—and all the experts, including Ken Rubin, Centre for Law and Democracy, have said this—those documents will still be blanked out today. That is why we cannot support the legislation. It does not fulfill the promises of the Liberal platform.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

The hon. member will have four minutes and 15 seconds remaining for questions and comments following question period.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-58, An Act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

There are four minutes remaining for questions and comments following the speech of the hon. member for Calgary Shepard.

The hon. member for Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the eloquent speech that the young member for Calgary Shepard gave before question period on the access to information reform showed the Conservative spirit. Unfortunately, it also showed that there are flaws in the Liberals' bill.

I would like the member to explain to me how the Liberals are breaking their promise to be transparent with this bill. Former information commissioner Robert Marleau said that this is one step forward and two steps back. The Liberals promised us transparency but now they are plunging us into darkness.

I would like my colleague to explain this bill's shortcomings and how the Liberals are breaking the promise they made to Canadians.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have the Liberal Party platform right here in front of me, so we can quickly go through it.

The Liberals said they would eliminate all of the fees, but portions of the legislation they would be amending indicate that eligible fees will still be applied in certain situations.

They said that they would update access to information to meet the standard. As I said, this is a Potemkin amendment act. It would not do anything. It would fix things on the outside, but the meat and potatoes, the guts of the bill, are in the exemptions. If how the exemptions are applied is not changed, the government can still refuse to reveal information to the general public.

The Liberals said that they would ensure that access to information applies to ministerial offices, to the Prime Minister, to administrative institutions that support Parliament, and to the courts. They did not do that.

They also said that they would review it every five years. As I mentioned in my intervention, if the sunset provisions are not added to this, and the way that we have been dealing with mandatary reviews every five years, it could very well happen that we will not get a review of this legislation for within maybe five to eight years. With the glacial speed that legislation makes it through the House, because of the government's lack of understanding and how the procedures work, we may not see it happen.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-58, the access to information reform legislation. It is with considerable disappointment that I must, on behalf of the NDP, be opposed to the initiative. However, I am also pleased to hear the President of the Treasury Board acknowledge that at committee, there might be a possibility for improving the legislation to give it some credibility.

If I may be permitted at the outset to make a personal statement, access to information, freedom of information, has been one of my passions. I did graduate work on this topic. In law, I worked with the Government of British Columbia in drafting the legislation there, as well as in Yukon. Back in the early eighties, I worked on behalf of the Canadian Bar Association to try to get the first access to information act through in a credible way. The former member of Parliament for Peace River, Conservative member Jed Baldwin, gave me an award of merit from the House for my work on freedom of information. Therefore, I come to this with a passion for the topic.

Three things are necessary for any credible law and, after 34 years, we all agree that this law needs modernizing. I salute the government for finally doing something in that regard. First, it has to have a clear statement that information is a right. Second, there have to be exceptions to the rule of openness that are narrow and have to demonstrate some harm from the disclosure. Third, there has to be an umpire, someone neutral, who can order a government that does not wish to provide the information to make it public. Those are the three things by which any reform must be evaluated. Sadly, this bill comes up short.

People sometimes have their eyes glaze over when we talk about access to information. That is usually the end of a conversation. People go back to doing something else. I want to tell Canadians who may be watching this why it is important. How many times have we read an article that starts with “Information released today under the Access to Information Act” reported thus and so? The answer is frequently.

The Globe and Mail used the Access to Information Act for its April 2016 investigative series “Unfounded”, which revealed that police had been dismissing one out of every five sexual assault claims as baseless. It took a year to get the information. The delays were ridiculous, and I will come back to that. That was the tool that was necessary for Canadians to understand what their police were and were not doing about sexual assault.

Just last week, the CBC reported that the Prime Minister's controversial Bahamas vacation cost Canadians over $215,000, far more than was initially disclosed to Parliament. That came about through a document released under this act.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to hear that after a year, reporters finally obtained the original contract from the Phoenix pay fiasco, once again thanks to this act.

Transparency is important. It was a major theme for the Liberal Party during the 2015 election. In fact, before that, the Prime Minister introduced Bill C-613, an act to amend the Access to Information Act. I would invite all Canadians to look at what the Prime Minister wanted to do with that bill while in opposition compared to what is being proposed today. I think they will see a yawning divide. What he said, though, in introducing that legislation, was that “a country's access to information system is at the heart of open government”. He is right.

Our Supreme Court also said that what we are talking about today is in fact quasi-constitutional in nature. This is not an ordinary act. It is something that the courts have recognized as essential to an open, modern democracy.

The New Democratic Party has introduced private members' bills to modernize the act so many times I do not want to list them all, but in 2006, 2008, 2011, 2014, this is something we tried to fix. Every time, the Conservatives and then the Liberals voted them down.

In March of 2015, the Information Commissioner released 85 recommendations to modernize the act. I invite Canadians to look at that list of recommendations and what we are left with today.

The point is that this is essential to fix, as the President of Treasury Board properly pointed out.

When we introduced this bill in the early eighties, computers were hardly a fact of life, email did not really exist in the public service, and record-keeping was very different than it is today. Clearly this is long overdue. It is too bad that the government has not taken the opportunity to do the job properly. Almost all civil society groups that have studied this have been outspoken in their opposition, some angry, but most simply sad and disappointed that this is what we are left with.

Let me talk about what the government did not do. That is how we have to assess this exercise. The exemptions to the rule of disclosure, the list of the things that the government can properly withhold, are very badly drafted, very discretionary, do not even have to show a harm. However, there is one that is different from all the others.

Back when this bill was introduced under the former Prime Minister Trudeau regime, it decided to cut out a category of records called “cabinet confidences”. It does not even apply to cabinet confidences. Everyone who has ever studied this has said that this is the Mack truck clause. In fact, some of the more humorous commentary describes this as “cabinet laundering”. All the government has to do if it does not want something disclosed is to slip it into a cabinet briefing book, and voila, the black hole. It never gets to be seen. It is not even subject to the act. One would have thought that after 34 years, job one would have been to maybe talk about that. It is not even mentioned. The black hole remains. Cabinet laundering can continue.

Information delayed is information denied. Every journalist in the land understands that. I had a journalist stop me on the street the other day, and she said that when she is asking for information, she usually gets something on the very last day of the 30-day period. Day 29 she is told that there is going to be a delay, and then the government asks for another delay. If she complains to the Information Commissioner, she is told that the office is swamped and it might take several months to get the story out. Even then, if the government does not want to do it, the Information Commissioner would recommend that it can say no.

Information delayed is information denied. That will not be fixed by this bill in any meaningful way.

The other thing is that we live in an oral culture. In fact, one of my colleagues refers to it as “the Post-it culture”. I will explain. If a government member has a record that they know is going to be subject to disclosure, maybe they put a little Post-it note on the document that says what the juicy bits are. That happens. I know that the Speaker will be surprised to hear that.

The duty to document decisions is not even part of this bill. I talked earlier about computers where we can delete transitory records and the like. However, the fact is that an oral culture is alive and well and living in Ottawa.

Let me get to the bill. What does Bill C-58 do, and why can we not support it? I would first like to quote from the Centre for Law and Democracy which said:

the Bill is far more conspicuous for what it fails to do....

It fails to expand the scope of the Act. It does place a number of proactive publication obligations on various actors – including the Prime Minister’s and Ministers’ Offices...but this falls far short of bringing these bodies within the ambit of the Act.

Certain types of information have always been available, at least in recent years, such as travel expenses, contracts over $10,000. By policy, these have been available for years. Now it is put in the bill, and the government thinks it should get a gold star for doing that. I am not sure why.

Again, quoting from the Centre for Law and Democracy:

While more proactive disclosure is always welcome, as anyone who has used the Act knows, it is absolutely not a substitute for the right to be able to request the information one is interested in from public authorities.

I think that is clear.

Today the minister made a lot of the notion that there is to be order-making powers under this bill. It is true that if we look closely, we can see that it is, in the words of a colleague, a chimera. It does not really do that.

Let me talk about how it works in the provinces. Let us take British Columbia, for example. The Information Commissioner makes an order: “Disclose that record, government. I know you do not want to do it, but it is not able to be withheld legitimately under the exceptions.” That is it. If the government wants to seek judicial review of that decision, it does so.

Let us compare that to the convoluted order-making power that the minister was so proud of in this bill. It seems to say that if the government agrees with a decision of the commissioner to release the document, it will be released. So what? If the government disagrees with the commissioner's recommendation, then the government could take him or her to Federal Court. Imagine how expensive and litigious this would all be. The government has created, in my submission, an unwieldy, unnecessary, and unaffordable system.

I wish I had time to go into the section that deals with this. It talks of the ability to make an order, but in the interest of time, suffice it to say that it is beyond complicated and likely unworkable. It would not really do what the minister has said it would do. I wish the Liberals had followed the simple route that most provinces have followed.

Though it is true that there would be proactive disclosure of a number of kinds of information from ministers' offices, the point is that Canadians would still not be able to request the information they want from those offices, appeal to the commissioner, and get an order to release it. It is just not there. The promise made in the election that we would have open offices and that people would get the information is not what is happening. That is very disappointing.

The Liberals also talked about the five-year review that is a feature of this act, and thank goodness it is there. That is nothing new. However, it is not like the Bank Act, for example, under which the legislation would sunset if that review did not take place by that time, so who knows how long it will actually take before we get to the review that is promised? That is very different from what the platform promised.

The Liberals talked today about something new, which is the ability to go after bad-faith, long, frivolous, and vexatious requests. That is a new restriction, not a change for the positive. I can appreciate why it is necessary, and, yes, it exists at the provincial level, but here is the punchline: this bill would give the final decision to the government to decide whether the request is too big, too long, or frivolous. Everywhere else, of course, it is the commissioner who gets to decide. Do members remember what I said about an umpire in the game who is neutral? I do not think the minister who does not want the information to be disclosed is in the best position to do that. I cannot believe they think that is a significant reform that we should be proud of.

The government is probably going to pat itself on the back for this bill. It is probably going to say, “We promised openness and transparency, and openness by default, and that is what we delivered.” The truth is far from that. I want to be optimistic—I always try to be—and give the government the benefit of the doubt. The minister stood in this place and said, “We will be open to amendments at committee”, and we are certainly going to be there to try to give him the opportunity to make this credible, because it is not credible now. It is kind of like the promise the Liberals made in 2015, when they said that 2015 would be the last election that would be fought under the first-past-the-post rules. That was a different promise. That was a different time and place.

The Prime Minister came to my riding when he was running in the election and said that he would have a full review of the Kinder Morgan pipeline proposal. Do members remember that promise? That kind of did not happen either. There was one about mail delivery. We were going to be open to mail delivery, I think. That was another promise.

Canadians deserve better than this bill. It is a start, to the extent that it adds exemptions; it does not go after the big changes and exemptions. Members heard me talk about cabinet confidences; the other nice one is the policy advice to the minister. They did not touch it. All they have to do is put all these documents into something that they give to the minister, and that is policy advice to the government. That massive loophole remains.

Once again, what they did not do is how we judge their reform initiative. It actually adds a loophole that would allow the department to refuse to process a request if it deems it to be overly broad, deems it would unreasonably interfere with the operations of government, or deems it to be made in bad faith. It is quite remarkable that the Liberals are patting themselves on the back. By simple comparison to the other legislation in the country, it is obvious that this bill does not pass muster.

The bill also ignores so many of the recommendations made by the Information Commissioner, as I pointed out, and by the ethics committee that also studied this legislation. It appears the government did not even read those. Much like the Harper government, the Liberals continue to disregard the recommendations made by the non-partisan watchdog. One sympathizes with the Herculean efforts made by Ms. Legault over the years to try to get both sides of this place, Conservative and Liberal alike, to take seriously the citizens' right to know. I salute for her efforts, futile though they have been to date.

I want to say by way of conclusion that the New Democrats have long advocated for giving the Information Commissioner real oversight and order-making powers. We believe that proactive disclosure is important and offer congratulations for putting into legislation what has been the practice to date so far, but I point out that the commissioner does not have oversight powers with respect to that proactive disclosure, so I guess we have to take the government's word for it.

Even if the Liberals were well intentioned, let us remember that we are making legislation that applies for future Canadians, for future generations of Canadians. How long did it take to get to this place with a new bill? It has taken 34 years. We have to get it right. We cannot say, “Don't worry; we are going to have a review in five years, or maybe another year or two after that”, because they do not have to do that if they do not want to. That has been our history, excepting the Bank Act.

We have to do it better. We can do it better, and I am not the only one saying this. The Centre for Law and Democracy, which has been cited already, has made the same point. Democracy Watch has explained it. Professor Mark Weiler, the web and user experience librarian who testified, wrote to our critic, the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, on this file, as follows: “I am greatly concerned that Bill C-58 will actually diminish the capacity of Canadians to access unpublished materials held by the government. The Access to Information Act should enhance the ability of Canadians to access information the government chooses not to publish.... Bill C-58 would actually make the Access to Information Act more difficult to use.”

What are we going to do about this? To go back to the basics, there has to be a strong statement of the right to know, and there is some verbiage to that effect in the new law. The exemptions have to be narrow, and they have to be about injury, not just in a box, a particular category of records, such as policy advice. It has to be shown that disclosure would harm some government interest. The Liberals did not do that; they didn't touch any of them. They only added one.

The third thing is that there has to be real order-making power when the umpire says the government has got it wrong. That did not cause a revolution in British Columbia when we did it, and that order-making power led to something like 90% of cases being mediated without the need to have a formal order-making hearing. Very, very rarely do we go to court; it is statistically insignificant.

There are ample precedents for doing this right. The order-making power that is in the bill is beyond comprehension. It will be expensive and it is totally unnecessary. Why do we have to make it so complicated when the principle is so obvious and when there are so many examples across the land?

I want to end on a positive note. We hope the government was serious when the President of the Treasury Board stood in the House earlier today and talked about the need to modernize this law and said that this is only the first phase and it is only a work in progress. He said he welcomes reports at committee, including amendments.

Trust me, we will have many of those amendments. We can do better. We must do better for Canadians.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge the deep experience my colleague, the member for Victoria, has on these matters, and I thank him for his comments.

I have to say that I was very disappointed with his strong focus on what he perceives as being absent from this important next step in our access to information system here in Canada. There was very little true reflection of the major step forward that this legislation would take for Canada after 34 years of no change. I will give one example of what I think was sometimes inaccurate and many times very exaggerated discourse on the perceived flaws in the legislation, which the member acknowledges the President of the Treasury Board sees as a work in progress that will still receive quite a bit of input.

The member opposite said that it will be five years before the work that we are doing today is reviewed. In fact, it will not be. The first review would happen within one year of this bill's receiving royal assent. It would happen within one year, so this really is a step on a pathway, a very important and complex pathway. I would like the member to respond to that inaccuracy in his comments earlier.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as I hope I said both at the beginning and the end of my remarks, I too remain hopeful that the government—finally, a government that has grasped the nettle in trying to modernize this legislation—will, in the spirit of it being a first step and in the spirit of it being a work in progress, take seriously these changes.

As for what is missing in the act, I hope the member understood that it was not me saying that. It was the experts at the Centre for Law and Democracy who said, once again:

...the Bill is far more conspicuous for what it fails to do, putting in place only one or at best one and one-half of the reforms called for by Canadians....

It does nothing to address the broad regime of exceptions (if anything, expanding its scope slightly). And it does not put in place a duty to document.

As for the five-year review, that is true. We hope we can get some action on that. Vince Gogolek, the president of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, said:

This is not the last word on [access] reform, but it might be the last opportunity to weigh in for some time. [Bill] C-58 includes a five-year review, but the first review will take place only a year after the legislation comes into force. Given the glacial pace at which legislation is going through Parliament these days, that could mean the review won’t take place until after the next election in 2019.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, two megaprojects approved by the Liberal government that were of great concern in British Columbia, the Site C dam and the Kinder Morgan pipeline, were both thought by activists and New Democrats to have disproportionate negative impacts on women, and indigenous women in particular. The government, having not taken the all-party committee's advice to legislate gender-based analysis, essentially said, “Trust us, we're doing it at the cabinet level. We have a gender lens.”

At the Standing Committee on Status of Women, when we asked the Minister of Status of Women at that time to tell us what the gender considerations were when the Site C dam and the Kinder Morgan pipeline were approved, she said that was a cabinet confidence and we should know better than even asking that.

I ask my colleague to tell me what this bill would do or fail to do in bringing the transparency that we had expected from the government as it approves significantly worrying and damaging projects in our region.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the question and the passion of the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith and her work on the status of women committee.

When the words “cabinet confidence” are uttered, we hear this giant sound, a sucking sound, of a black hole into which all record requests must go immediately. To say those two words is like a mantra for the Government of Canada. It was Prime Minister Trudeau, with Michael Pitfield at his side, who insisted that if they were going to have this foreign thing called access to information, they had to do one thing quickly: carve out a whole category of cabinet confidences.

The act does not even apply. It is not an exception; it is called an exclusion. If the minister says there cannot be gender-based analysis vis-à-vis Kinder Morgan or Site C, she is right. One can say whatever one wants, but as soon as it is cabinet confidence, it is like an incantation, and that is the end of the day.

That is not what it is in Ontario, that is not what it is in Quebec, and that is not what it is in British Columbia. Why does it have to live in Ottawa?

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Victoria for his very enlightened speech, which helped us understand why Bill C-58 does not really address ethics issues.

This only adds to the cynicism that already exists around politics, when the government says it want to modernize legislation to give Canadians access to information, when in fact, transparency is not enhanced at all, since ministers' offices, including the PMO, are not obliged to report to the commissioner.

Right now, it can take up to 200 days to get crucial information. For instance, according to the Globe and Mail, in April 2016, the RCMP took over a year to forward some statistics it had requested for an investigative report called Unfounded.

When the police declare one in five sexual assault complaints unfounded, this creates further hardships for the people already going through a very difficult situation following a sexual assault. One in five complaints is dismissed as unfounded, and it took a year to provide that information. I find that completely unacceptable, and this bill does absolutely nothing to address this problem.

What are my colleague's thoughts on that?

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the shocking truth of the report The Globe and Mail last year about the fact that only one in five sexual assaults were taken seriously by the police has led to changes.

The member talked about the public's cynicism in this area. I find journalists to be the most cynical. It does not have to be this way.

Journalists south of the border phone the government and they get the information. When the same information is sought in Ottawa, I am told it takes years or it is denied, and years is an accurate statement. As the member pointed out, it took one year to put together the file that led to this investigative journalism report. This matters because information is the raw material of which decisions are made. If we cannot assess that information and investigative journalists cannot find out the truth of what happens, then Canada obviously as a country is much worse off.

Access to information matters. We can do better. This legislation is quasi-constitutional in nature. We must do better and make it work at committee. I am looking forward to working with the government in order to do so.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, would the member at the very least recognize that the legislation would improve our system significantly? It would appear that he does somewhat indirectly. The government has been fairly clear. When we go into the committee process, we look forward to hearing potential amendments from NDP members. They might want to share some of those amendments sooner as opposed to later if they are so confident in them. Let us wait and see what happens at committee.

This legislation would make a significant improvement to transparency and open government. We should all be supporting it.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will have to disagree with my hon. friend from Winnipeg North. We cannot support something that will do so little to deal with the fundamental problems that, after 34 years, governments on both sides of the aisle have created.

The amendments from the NDP that the government can anticipate will be very much like the amendments from the committee that studied this. They will be very much like the amendments from the Information Commissioner. They will be very much like the amendments that were proposed over years. They may even be like the amendments the Prime Minister sought to make to the legislation when he was in opposition, which I would suggest are very different than what we see before us today in the legislation.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Democratic Institutions]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver Quadra.

I am proud to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-58, an act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act.

Our government was elected on a promise to reinforce public trust in our democracy, and over the course of our time in office, we have put action behind our words. For example, we are reforming campaign finance laws to make one of the world's most respected democracies even more transparent. We have introduced legislation to make Canada's democracy more accessible to all Canadians. The debate today is about another of the fundamental concepts of any modern democracy.

We know Canadians cannot meaningfully participate in democracy when they are in an information vacuum. Access to government data is vital. Without it, neither the public nor the media are able to hold governments to account. That is why our government promised to firm up one of the key pillars of our democracy: access to information.

We told Canadians we would make information open by default, and in formats that would be modern and simple to use. Canadians pay for the information that is assembled in the Government of Canada, so why should they not have access to this data? This greater openness in turn will lead to greater confidence in our democracy, which is why this government has put such a great emphasis on amending the Access to Information Act with Bill C-58.

This is the first major overhaul since our predecessors in this very institution voted in favour of the current act 35 years ago, so it is long overdue.

The act, which was enacted in Parliament in 1982, and took effect the following year, came long before anyone had ever heard of the Internet. Governments in those days had far more administrators and clerks, because there was so much paperwork to file and record. One could not just flip a written message to a colleague by email. If one wanted to send an interesting news article to a counterpart in another department, one could not just forward a link. One's options were limited to things like a fax machine or an inter-office courier.

Today, technology has dramatically changed how governments operate, and we need to align our laws to take into account this new reality. We have a responsibility to make it easier to obtain information and once Canadians get it, that information should be in easy-to-use formats. We can think of the graduate students, like those at Dalhousie University or Saint Mary's University in my riding of Halifax, who are out there doing groundbreaking research but operating on tight timelines. We want them to be able to, when possible, obtain an electronic version of government records so they can more easily navigate and analyze the documents. Think of the time that will be saved if they do not have to go through hundreds of pages to find what they are looking for.

Now Bill C-58 has many components, but for now I would like to focus on how it impacts parliamentary institutions. I am talking about the Library of Parliament, the parliamentary budget officer, the Parliamentary Protective Service, the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, the Office of the Senate Ethics Officer, and the administration of the Senate and of the House of Commons. These institutions are foundational components of our democracy, and Bill C-58 proposes to bring them under the Access to Information Act to make them more accountable. The proposed legislation will require these institutions to publish each quarter their travel and hospitality expenses as well as disclose over the same timeline any contracts with a value above $10,000.

Another important component of Bill C-58 is the new powers it would give to our Information Commissioner. This is of particular interest to me, both in my role as a Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Democratic Institutions as well as the member of Parliament for Halifax.

Not too long ago, I met with representatives from a group based in Halifax called the Centre for Law and Democracy, whose mission is to:

...promote, protect and develop those human rights which serve as the foundation for or underpin democracy, including the rights to freedom of expression, to vote and participate in governance, to access information and to freedom of assembly and association.

Some members may be familiar with the centre's work on the right to information rating, or RTI, which is developed along with Access Info Europe to calculate and rate the overall strength of countries' right to information laws.

The topic of the Information Commissioner was one I discussed with representatives of this group in my office during a meeting in the spring. They believe, as I do, and so too does our government believe, that the Information Commissioner ought to have the ability to order the release of records, or so-called “order making”. I am proud to say that Bill C-58 would give the Information Commissioner that power. I would like to congratulate and thank the Centre for Law and Democracy on its strong advocacy on this point, and for its ongoing work in Canada and across the world to strengthen democratic institutions.

It is important to note that the legislation would also give government institutions the ability to decline requests that are excessively broad or requests of information already in the public domain.

The government has limited resources, and this will free up government institutions to respond to other requesters. Of course the applicant subjected to a decision like this would be able to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner.

Bill C-58 would also oblige members of Parliament and senators to publish all travel and hospitality expenses, and all service contract amounts. In both cases, this information would have to be made public on a quarterly basis.

We know senators and members of Parliament already publish travel and hospitality expenses pursuant to their own internal rules, and senators disclose service contract information, while MPs publish the total costs of awarded service contracts.

Importantly, Bill C-58 would enshrine the current practice of also requiring additional details on the service contracts and travel costs of MPs.

This legislation will require a review of the act every five years, starting in 2019. This will give Canadians an opportunity to look for further improvements.

We believe Canada deserves a vibrant democracy that is transparent, open, and accountable, but our efforts do not begin and end with changes to the Access to Information Act.

We have been relentless since taking office to look for other ways to improve our democratic system. For instance, Bill C-33 would amend the Canada Elections Act to increase voter participation and improve the integrity of our electoral system. Bill C-50, meanwhile, if passed, will make important changes to the same act to make political fundraising more open and transparent. We are also taking action against cyber threats and the danger they pose to our electoral system.

We live in one of the most respected democracies in the world, but our government will remain relentless in ensuring that any weaknesses are dealt with. Bill C-58 is a major part of this effort, and I am proud to work with the Minister of Democratic Institutions to advance it. With that, I welcome any questions from my colleagues.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the Centre for Law and Democracy will give a rating out of 150 points, and the rating says that this so-called improvement, this amendment law, only improves the rating by two points. That is two points for all of this supposed historic milestone that the government has reached in amending the law.

Other points it makes are about vexatious and frivolous claims for access to information, or what the department considers vexatious. The centre says that should be reversed, that it should first go to the Information Commissioner to determine whether it is vexatious. People should not have to go to the Information Commissioner if they disagree with the department.

Could the member tell us why the government did not just ask the Centre for Law and Democracy to write the bill for it?

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Centre for Law and Democracy for the concept of the RTI and for its contribution to the bill, through its advocacy, as it stands now.

Our government is raising the bar and enshrining a culture of openness and transparency across government. The legislation will require a proactive disclosure of mandate letters, question period binders, travel and hospitality expenses, and contracts over $10,000. This will ensure Canadians have more information about the way their leaders work.

This would replace the current patchwork approach for proactive disclosure with one commonly and evenly applied set of rules. These reforms are an important step in an ongoing review and modernization of the Access to Information Act. We look forward to working with all members and the Centre for Law and Democracy to enhance accountability.

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Mr. Speaker, some of the comments we have heard from the government have been around the fact that it has been so long, that we should be grateful it is doing something.

That type of attitude really bothers me, because I think it creates cynicism in the public. I do not see why we need to take incremental steps, particularly with some of the things the Prime Minister said during the election campaign.

I want to focus on one part of the bill, and that is not extending the coverage of the Access to Information Act to the Prime Minister's Office and the ministers' offices. From what the Prime Minister said during the election, this should be a highlight of the bill.

On what grounds did the government decide that Canadians did not deserve this transparency of these offices?

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to imagine anything that creates more cynicism than being chastised for doing the right thing.

We are very proud to be doing the right thing. It is overdue. We are taking a very good, fundamental step toward increasing openness and transparency through this bill and through many actions across the mandate of the government. We are ensuring that these changes impact a variety of our parliamentary institutions, including the Library of Parliament, the parliamentary budget officer, the Parliamentary Protective Service, the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, the Office of the Senate Ethics Officer, the administration of both the Senate and House of Commons, and the list goes on.

We are fundamentally doing the work of good democracy in Canada to create the most open and transparent democracy we can.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member must know that past legislation the government put forward, such as Bill C-44, Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1, actually limited access. Section 28 actually limited the access Canadians could have to documentation related to the Canada infrastructure bank.

The member must know that in this legislation, the government is actually getting rid of the section that forces departments to list the types of documentation and records they keep. That is not me saying it. Ken Rubin and the Centre for Law and Democracy say this. How can the Liberals claim that this is somehow a vast improvement, when they are actually drawing back on certain elements and have kept every single exemption in the law?

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, as I said, this is part of our massive effort across government to increase openness and transparency, not just through this act but through amendments to other acts that are on the Order Paper as well. We are fundamentally increasing the openness and transparency of our government and are increasing the ability of Canadians to have less cynicism and more trust in what we are trying to do here.

I look forward to working with all members of this House and of the other place, as does the Minister of Democratic Institutions, to make sure we can achieve those outcomes together.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to Bill C-58, a comprehensive set of amendments to the Access to Information Act that would deliver on our government's key commitment to improve openness and transparency in government. If passed, these amendments would make progress in bringing Canada's access to information legislation in line with the communication advances of the last three decades.

The act has not been significantly updated since it came into force 34 years ago, when fax machines were cutting edge and information was stored in huge filing rooms. As we all know, however, the world has evolved considerably since then. Today, it is smart phones and social media, big data and high-speed Internet.

Canadians seek out information through digital channels, and government can now interact with the public through the web and social media. Moreover, the volume of information the government manages has dramatically increased.

I think we can all agree that the current act needs to be brought up to date.

We have certainly been hearing that so far in the debate.

This is why the government committed to reforming Canada’s access to information program. This modernization began with early action to improve access to information.

In May 2016, the President of the Treasury Board issued an interim directive that enshrined the principle of open by default. He eliminated all fees, apart from the $5 filing fee, and directed the release of government information in user-friendly formats wherever possible. Fees for processing large-volume requests could run into the hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars and sometimes deterred people from having access to public information.

Those were good first steps. Today we are maintaining that elimination of fees, and we are bringing forward transformative measures to enhance Canadians' access to government information.

Let me begin with one of many ground-breaking features of our proposed legislation. For the very first time, the Information Commissioner would have order-making power. No access to information regime is complete without powerful and meaningful oversight. We promised Canadians that we would find ways to empower the Office of the Information Commissioner to order government information to be released.

The bill before us today would do just that. This is something that has come up again and again in the debate as one of the key things that are a necessary change, and we are making that change. This change would strengthen the commissioner's role from that of an ombudsperson to that of an authority with a legislative ability to order government institutions to release records.

The legislation also proposes to entrench in law, for future and current governments, an obligation to proactively publish a broad range of information on a predictable schedule and without the need for anyone to make an access to information request for that information.

The amendments would create a new part of the act on proactive publication which builds on current best practices, applies consistent requirements across government institutions, and seizes on the opportunities of our digital age.

These amendments would result in the proactive release of key information throughout government.

This is a process that would take place across literally hundreds of offices and departments of the government. It would allow our citizens a greater understanding of government and would demonstrate effective stewardship of public funds.

Here is another first. Through this legislative system of mandatory proactive disclosure, the act would, for the first time ever, include ministers' offices, the Prime Minister's Office, institutions that support Parliament, administrative institutions that support the courts, and more than 1,100 judges of the superior courts.

This system of mandatory proactive disclosure puts a strong emphasis on increasing the information that is open by default and making information that is of interest to Canadians freely available on the web.

I would like to take this opportunity to highlight a few more features of the reforms we will make to our access to information regime.

Having just spoken about the proactive publication that is key to our commitment to openness by default, I also want to mention a few other things we are doing in the bill.

We will develop a new plain language guide that will provide requesters with clear explanations of exemptions and exclusions. The rationale for these exclusions will be laid out, a rationale that will be in the public interest.

We would invest in tools to make processing information more efficient. That is an important way to address one of the key weaknesses of our current system, which is how many access to information requests are not responded to in a timely way.

The bill would allow federal institutions that have the same minister to share their request processing services for greater efficiency and timeliness. It would support the new legislation with government training. There are many things we would do.

It is important to note that many of our changes were initiated at the recommendation of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

It would be subject to the oversight of the Information Commissioner. The bill proposes that if a department decides to decline to act on a request, the requester will have the right to appeal to the Information Commissioner, and the Commissioner could use the new order-making power to resolve the issue.

This is a new authority that could significantly improve the system, but it needs to be implemented with care.

We look forward to debating the proposed provisions with parliamentarians in a thoughtful way. All these changes were designed to address criticism from Canadians about delays and inconsistencies in the current request-based system and recommendations from stakeholders, such as the Information Commissioner and our colleagues at the ETHI committee.

We can never become complacent when it comes to openness and transparency. That is why the reforms before us today are the first legislative phase in what would be an ongoing review and modernization of the act.

The legislation would require a review of the act every five years, and as I pointed out earlier in the debate, the first review would start no later than one year after royal assent, so this is really an ongoing improvement process. These five-year reviews would provide an important opportunity for Canadians to have their say on access rights and would help us make sure that the system met their needs.

These reviews will assess what is working and how, and ensure that the act is never allowed to become so outdated again. Today, I am proud to be part of the first government to bring significant change to the Access to Information Act since it was first introduced over 30 years ago.

I encourage all members to support this work and this bill, and in doing so help us take a great step forward in updating the Access to Information Act.

I also look forward to continuing to work with Parliament, the Information Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner, and other stakeholders to further strengthen our access to information regime.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary said that this bill delivers on a key commitment of transparency for the government. I ask her why the government chose not to change one single rule, one single exemption, or the cabinet exclusion by which it is allowed to hold information back. If it delivers in the way that she suggests, why the scathing criticism from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Democracy Watch, the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, and even the Canadian Association of Research Librarians?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would say to my colleague from Victoria that exclusions and exemptions are there to protect highly sensitive information related to national security, the privacy of Canadians, commercial sensitivity, and cabinet confidence. This is a historic upgrade and improvement to our Access to Information Act, and it must include the ability to exclude certain information from public access. That is just what we are doing.

I want to remind the member that this is a historic first for Canada in that the Information Commissioner will have order-making powers. If there is a concern that an exclusion is not based on one of these requirements, that person can go to the Information Commissioner, who can order the government to do it differently.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are familiar with my colleague's deep experience.

Does she realize that many people get the impression that this is like a mother-in-law going down into the basement to see if it is tidied up, but two or three things were strategically placed so that she would not have to look too far? I get the impression that that is more or less what the government is doing right now. It promises to provide access to all sorts of things, to several examples to prove that everything is just fine, then closes the door that provides access to other secrets and locks and seals it up. It is more complicated than ever to get information.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.

I would say that these changes to the Access to Information Act are truly important and powerful for Canadians. They follow the great principles of openness and transparency and put mechanisms in place for disclosing information.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in her response to one of the questions, thehon. parliamentary secretary referred to order-making powers. She said that the exclusions did not need to be fixed, because they will now be the subject of order-making powers by the commissioner. If a category in the legislation is very wide, which in other jurisdictions covering the same issues, such as policy advice, is more narrow, then giving an order-making power to someone to say that it is indeed in that category does not really achieve the goal of greater transparency.

I would invite the House to look at proposed section 36.1 as presented in clause 16 of the new bill to see if anyone can make sense of the order-making power of which she speaks. It is a long way from a situation in which the commissioner makes an order, and that is it, unless there is judicial review.

Therefore, on those two counts, I hardly think we can be pleased with what we have before us.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, let me be clear for the member for Victoria. What I said was that there are very good reasons for certain exclusions and exemptions. We respect those reasons. The member himself pointed out that it is an important pillar of a proper access to information approach. The focus of this bill is to implement our mandate letter of commitment, and that is exactly what we are doing.

We have also been clear that this is the beginning of an ongoing process. We look forward to continuing to strengthen the system at the first occasion, which is the mandatory review that would be started within a year of this bill receiving royal assent.

I want to also point out that exclusions such as cabinet confidences have been recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada as a part of our democratic principles.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians deserve a government that is accountable and open by default. For that to be possible, Canadians must have access to information about government decisions and practices to hold their government to account. While the Liberal government pays lips service to those ideals of openness and accountability, it has consistently fallen short of implementing them. We have seen this in a variety of areas, particularly with the statement by the Prime Minister on open and accountable government.

The stated aim of Bill C-58 is to update the Access to Information Act with necessary reforms. However, as with many Liberal promises, it fails to achieve them. We have heard them invoking flowery language and buzz words and making grand-sounding claims as a substitute for action in many instances in this Parliament. This bill is no different in many respects, and I will get to some of them.

An open and accountable government requires citizens to have access to information about decisions made by Parliament and government entities. Since the first Access to Information Act was introduced in 1983, the act has provided Canadians with the means to request information about themselves, or decisions affecting them. However, because of significant changes in information technology and in government operations and the passage of time, the act has not been meaningfully updated since it was first introduced, and many critics across all party lines have identified the need for reform.

The Conservatives introduced the idea of openness by default in the previous parliament. In 1983, it was originally a Liberal government that introduced the act. However, successive Conservative and Liberal governments have neglected to update it as required. Although I guess the current Liberal government is to be commended for undertaking the task in the first place, we see many shortcomings in the resulting bill. Bill C-58 does not adequately address many of the flaws in Canada's current access to information regime that we heard about in detail at committee.

When I was a member of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, we conducted a detailed study of the act and the issues surrounding it. We heard from numerous witnesses, from accountability watchdogs to ATIP officers in government departments to Canada's Information Commissioner, and others. We reviewed the commissioner's comprehensive report on the state of access to information in Canada and adopted many of her key recommendations in our own report. All three parties on the committee co-operated to draft a thoughtful report, with sensible recommendations for access to information reform. However, the government's response to our report is both late and underwhelming. The Liberals promised that phase one of the ministerial level review of Canada's access to information regime would be completed in time to produce legislation in early 2017. Here we are in late September and just beginning today to debate the bill, which many critics consider to be a half measure.

One of the primary flaws that witnesses at committee pointed out is the culture of secrecy throughout government. Such a culture runs contrary to both Liberal promises and Conservative initiatives. This has run across party lines over time. For example, the Conservatives hold that Canada's government should be open by default. In the last parliament, the Conservative government released a study titled “Canada's Action Plan on Open Government”, in which the Conservatives recognized the following:

The key challenge for governments is how to shift to an environment where data and information are released openly to the public by default while respecting privacy, security, and confidentiality restrictions.

Such an environment represents a fundamental change in government culture that requires government-wide direction to drive the release of federal information and advance overall objectives for transparency, accountability, and citizen engagement.

Such an environment of disclosure would be a stark departure from what witnesses at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics described as a culture of secrecy among government entities.

According to witnesses like Sean Holman, vice-president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, the general attitude of the public service is one of withholding instead of disclosing information, and one of caution instead of candour. This attitude flows from the act and from cabinet. Mr. Holman put it clearly when he said:

We have a cultural problem when it comes to secrecy....Fixing the Access to Information Act is only one part of addressing those problems....the problem with the Access to Information Act when it was introduced was that it was grafted onto a secretive political system. We did not deal with the actual problem; we instead introduced legislation that conformed to the system as it currently existed.

He was referring to the adoption of the original act in 1983, which has remained virtually unchanged since then.

This is not to criticize Canada's public servants, since they respond to direction from the top. Those that enter the public service walk into a culture that already exists. Bringing about a culture of openness by default requires buy-in from ministers, the Prime Minister, deputy ministers, and senior managers among all departments. Culture cannot be changed overnight and simply by adopting a new law in Parliament.

Openness and accountability require timely responses. Witnesses at committee complained bitterly about the delays in the service standards for responding to ATIPS. They mentioned that extension after extension can take response times of up to over a year in some cases. This diminishes the news value of information for journalists. It puts people's lives on hold in some circumstances when they need vital information, and brings to mind the adage that justice delayed is justice denied.

Bill C-58 includes some of the committee's recommendations, the most significant of which is granting the commissioner the power to issue binding orders for the disclosure of particular information. Although it should increase the public's access to information, such order-making power is not a panacea for solving a culture of secrecy. Also, it was not uniformly endorsed in witness testimony, although it was the final recommendation of the committee.

The committee heard from witnesses like Professor Michel Drapeau, a retired colonel and access to information and privacy lawyer. He argued that switching to an order-making model is unnecessary because the issue and the problem that existed was the culture in government and the lack of openness in which departmental ATIP officers responded or operated in.

If within a department the ATIP officers and other members of the public service have a mindset and a culture to openly disclose information and to think first of ensuring that it is released on a timely basis, we might not be arguing about whether or not order-making power is necessary to compel disclosure. Delay is the biggest failure perhaps, which will not be solved by merely establishing order-making power for the commissioner.

We are glad to see that Bill C-58 requires the minister to undertake a review at least within one year of royal assent and every five years thereafter. Hopefully, that will prevent us from going another 34 years without a review of the act. It is important, because we know that the pace of change in information technology and the evolution of that technology is very fast, and as long as political will continues to exist to review the act in the future, it is good to have the built-in provision for review.

The provisions in Bill C-58 requiring proactive publication of materials related to Parliament, ministers' offices, superior courts, and other government institutions are a welcome addition to the access to information regime and should contribute to the culture of openness by default, but there is certainly a long way to go to establish that change of culture.

Proactive disclosure of sought after information should increase democratic accountability and pre-empt many requests, but proactive disclosure by various parliamentary and governmental entities is not the same as extending the scope of the Access to Information Act to cover them. It is not what the committee recommended nor what the commissioner recommended and not what the Liberals promised in their 2015 election platform, and it is not what the Prime Minister ordered in the mandate letter of the President of the Treasury Board.

The minister's mandate letter instructs him to lead a review of the act and implement certain reforms, such as ensuring that “the Act applies appropriately to the Prime Minister’s and Ministers’ Offices, as well as administrative institutions that support Parliament and the courts.”

Ensuring that the act applies to the prime minister's and ministers' offices requires more than proactive disclosure of a limited list of useful information, but this is not the only recommendation that the bill either ignores or only partially addresses.

Our report suggested several matters that the government should consider or consult on during the second phase of its review. I welcome an update from the government on the state of those considerations and consultations.

Open and accountable government requires an access to information regime that ensures timely responses to ATIP requests. This applies to all elements of the Government of Canada, with a few important exceptions, namely, to protect parliamentary privilege, cabinet confidence, and national security. This prevents government entities from wiggling out of disclosure obligations. That is why the committee recommended that the minister consult the organizations that support Parliament, such as the clerks of the Senate and the House of Commons, and the parliamentary librarian to determine how to effectively protect parliamentary privilege and create an independent review process for such provisions.

To improve timely response to ATIP requests, we recommended limiting extensions to only those cases where strictly necessary, and even then, only for a maximum of 30 days. We also recommended repealing exclusions in the act and replacing them with exemptions as needed. As Ken Rubin mentioned, when responding to a question at committee, we cannot expect to change a culture of secrecy just by giving order-making power to the commissioner, and especially not if all the carve-outs remain in place through the retention of an extensive list of exemptions.

Eliminating exclusions, which are stated areas that the act does not cover, and replacing them with exemptions, which would allow government entities to refuse requests on specific grounds, would provide greater oversight of Canada's access to information regime. It would also shift the culture of the public service more toward openness by default.

To protect the vital governance work of Parliament, the committee recommended adding a mandatory exemption for cabinet confidences when disclosure would reveal the substance of cabinet deliberations, except when such discussions cover a period of factual or background information when there is consent for disclosure of the information, and so forth.

For ease of understanding, to reduce the volume of requests received and to contribute to a culture of openness by default, the committee recommended that institutions respond to ATIP requests by providing information in open, reusable, and accessible file formats, such as pdf, Word, Excel, and similar formats, instead of obscure and highly specialized ones.

Although useful in their own right, the measures the committee recommended would not create a comprehensive access to information regime with great swaths of government entities that are not subject to the act.

Aaron Wudrick of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation pointed out at committee that “as a general principle the federal Access to Information Act should cover all of the federal government, including both government-controlled and government-funded areas.” The principle here is quite simple: where taxpayers' money is being spent, the public deserves accountability and transparency.

To address such an extension of the act, the Information Commissioner stated that “The use of criteria as a way to determine which entities should be subject to the Act is a rational approach to coverage, as it promotes predictability with respect to which entities are subject to the Act.” Moreover, it guarantees that institutions performing similar functions are also subject to it. Her criteria included whether an entity is covered because it is publicly controlled in whole or in part by the government; whether it performs public functions under federal jurisdiction because it has power to regulate and set standards under federal jurisdiction because it is charged with executing federal policy; whether it is established by federal statute; or whether it is one of the many covered by the Financial Administration Act.

The government has undertaken a review of Canada's access to information regime and has made a first attempt at updating the act. We are disappointed that the President of the Treasury Board has ignored many of the committee's recommendations. What could have been a good start on a worthy project has become something of a disappointment to the members, witnesses, and the Information Commissioner herself, who contributed to a detailed study on the topic. The President of the Treasury Board seems to expect extraordinary credit for these meagre steps that do not seem likely to fix all of the problems in an access to information system that is widely described by critics as broken.

This morning, the minister made it out as if Bill C-58 would instantly transform Canada into a world leader in access to information. That is simply not the case. Many of the problems will remain in place. Comparatively, we have a country like Serbia, which was not even a sovereign nation but part of a federation under a communist dictatorship in 1983 when our act was brought in. It is ranked ahead of Canada by international observers. This is not a credit to the current system. As well, we can compare to countries like Sweden that have had access to information law for 250 years. Witnesses could not believe that in Canada it would take months and months to get information that would routinely be released in 24 hours in countries like that.

The government is trying to take far too much credit for this reform. I urge the minister to reconsider Bill C-58 and correct its many deficiencies. I encourage the new members of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics to take advantage of review stage and amend it. Canada indeed deserves an open and accountable government, with a sensible and comprehensive access to information regime. We deserve better than Bill C-58.

I will not support this bill. To do so would be to reward the government for breaking its election promises and taking credit for window dressing, which it has described as a grand and comprehensive solution.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

The hon. for Calgary Rocky Ridge will have three minutes remaining when this bill is next before the House, as it is now time for private members' business.

It being 1:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's Order Paper.

The House resumed from September 22 consideration of the motion that Bill C-58, An Act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House, and I am particularly pleased to be able to speak to this bill. This is not the first time that I have risen in the House, and I have had even more opportunities to do so since being appointed to the shadow cabinet as Treasury Board critic. However, this is the first time that I have had a chance to talk about a subject that comes straight from the Treasury Board. The hon. President of the Treasury Board introduced this bill just before the House rose for the summer in June, which means we had time to look it over and make observations about it. I am very honoured and proud to take on this essential role of providing positive, constructive, and, above all, vigilant opposition.

As such, I am very pleased to rise and speak to this extremely important bill that amends the Access to Information Act. That act was first introduced some time ago, so we have been living under its provisions since 1983. Fundamentally, our party is in no way opposed to carefully scrutinizing any act, statute, or procedure in order to enhance or improve it. A number of changes have been made over the past 35 years, since the bill was first debated and passed here in the House, particularly when it comes to information technology. Everyone agrees that access to information has changed over time. Simply put, we are not opposed to scrutinizing this act from 1983.

Still, we need to be logical and consistent, since this is about drawing a very fine line between access to information, which is necessary in a democracy, and for which I would be the first to fight as a former journalist, and the ability of the executive branch to do its job, for which it requires certain information. Some of the exchanges and debates that take place within cabinet are crucial and healthy for a democracy, but they need to remain behind the closed doors of cabinet. The same is true in parliamentary life, considering that every Wednesday morning, each parliamentary group has caucus meetings, where we can discuss the issues that matter in a positive, constructive way that lays a foundation for the future, while also sometimes having different points of view. That is democracy at work.

The government says that it tabled this bill to fulfill a political commitment. Really? Let us look back at the promise made by the Liberal Party two years ago during the campaign, which was, “Real Change. A New Plan for a Strong Middle Class.” That was the Liberal Party's program. On page 24, regarding access to information, it states, “We will make government information more accessible.” No one can disagree with that. It is like apple pie. No one is against better access to information.

The Liberals' specific objectives are, “We will ensure that access to information applies to the Prime Minister’s and ministers’ offices, as well as administrative institutions that support Parliament and the courts.” That is where the problem lies, because the first of these objectives has not been met and access to information still does not apply to the PMO. That is a broken promise by the Liberals.

I will come back to that a bit later on. We will show that the commitment made during the campaign, the very reason why Canadians elected this government, was once again, unfortunately, not upheld by the Liberals. We believe that it fuels public cynicism towards politicians. When a government does not keep its promises, which we strongly condemn, every single politician pays the price.

Let us take a closer look at what Bill C-58 entails exactly.

The real novelty of the bill is that the government is imposing a system of proactive publication, which is not so bad.

Let us look at what the government has tabled in the bill. Access to information lies in ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's office to properly publish the following information: mandate letters, and we have the mandate letters and everybody has seen them, so there is nothing new there; documentation on the training for new ministers; title and reference numbers of briefing notes; development notes for question period; backgrounders for occurrences before parliamentary committees; travel and hospitality expenditures; and contracts of more than $10,000.

This is the main problem. We are talking about proactive tabling of documents. That is great. Nobody can disagree with that, but on the other hand, and we will see it later, this is the end of the mandate for the Prime Minister and ministers.

Government organizations will also have to proactively publish the following information: travel expenses and shared travel expenses; reports tabled in Parliament; briefing packages for deputy heads; information about briefing notes; briefing materials for parliamentary committee appearances; contracts over $10,000; contributions over $25,000; and reclassification of positions.

The big change with this new bill is that the government is now deciding to publish this information proactively, which is not a bad thing, but the problem is that it ends there. That is why we have serious reservations about this bill, which does not really honour the Liberal Party's campaign promise. This bill is actually at odds with that promise.

Broken promises lead to disappointment. When people have expectations, they want those expectations met. People, especially those in the information sector, felt that this was one of the Liberal Party's key promises, so they expected the Liberal Party, once in government, to keep it. Unfortunately, people's faith was wasted on the Liberal Party because it did not keep that promise. That is from them, not me.

Let me read some quotes from important stakeholders about this important issue.

Katie Gibbs, executive director of Evidence for Democracy group, says that by ruling out the possibility to obtain information from ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's office, the government is breaking its campaign promise to establish a government “open by default”. Moreover, she says, that the possibility to refuse access to information requests on an undefined basis jeopardizes the transparency and the openness of the government.

That is the problem. The Liberal Party promised to be more open, but proactively publishing information and then leaving it at that poses a problem.

I do not want to undermine this approach, but the reality is that the documents that are released and that will be proactively released, are general access documents, or documents that almost anyone can access, such as the ministers' mandate letters that were made public by the Prime Minister on the day the ministers were sworn in, which was a good thing. A minister's mandate letter is indeed published on the day he or she is sworn in, if memory serves me correctly. It was a good idea. That has been the practice for the past two years, and it is working out well enough. However, when it comes to preparing ministers for question period, we are talking about factual information, facts, figures, and basic information. When we ask for a technical briefing, or a refresher course on the ins and outs of a bill, then we are generally given more specific information. We have an excellent working relationship with the ministers' offices and departmental officials who are there to serve all Canadians.

Then, once we all have the same background information, we can prepare our arguments for or against the topic in question. This is what is great about democracy. There will always be people for something and people against it. It would be odd if everyone were in favour of the same thing.

As Katie Gibbs, the executive director of Evidence for Democracy, said, this bill falls short, and that is disappointing.

It is the same thing for another important stakeholder.

Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch group, says:

The bill take a step backwards in allowing government officials to deny requests for information if they think the request is frivolous or made in bad faith. Public officials should not be given this power, as they will likely use it as a new loophole to deny the public information it has a right to know.

Mr. Conacher is on the same page. It is all well and good to be proactive, but there is no recourse if access to a document is denied because it is an executive-branch document and cannot be disclosed. That is the problem.

The government can go on and on about how open it is, but the government's actions and this bill do not reflect that reality.

Some people in Quebec have been very disappointed in the Liberal government. These people may have been seduced by the Liberal Party's big promises during the last election campaign, but now reality has caught up with them. Stéphane Giroux, the president of the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, said, “We were most interested in getting documents from ministers' offices. False alarm. It was too good to be true.” This is yet another disappointment.

This bill is a complete letdown. I have one more very interesting stakeholder to mention. He is so important that I saved him for last, because he is someone who really knows what he is talking about. His name is Robert Marleau, and he served as information commissioner from 2007 to 2009. He said, and I quote:

For the ministries, there is no one to review what they choose not to disclose, and I think that goes against the principle of the statute. They have taken the commissioner out of the loop. If you ask for these briefing notes, and you have got them and they were redacted, you had someone to appeal to. So there is no appeal. You cannot even go to a court. It is one step forward, two steps back.

This was not some big bad Conservative or New Democrat speaking, or even anyone from the Green Party or the Bloc Québécois. This was Robert Marleau, a man who spent years enforcing the Access to Information Act as information commissioner from 2007 to 2009, pointing out very clearly the problems stemming from this act.

The government claims to want to be open and proactive, which in theory is not a bad thing. However, in reality, it is no longer possible for people to appeal if the information they requested is not provided. Robert Marleau pointed out that problem.

Other observers have been extremely critical. I am not talking about people with a direct interest in the issue, or about pressure groups, or anything like that. Rather, I am talking about observers like Shawn McCarthy of The Globe and Mail, who said the following in an article published on September 18:

The Liberals also vowed to amend the ATI law to make government “open by default.” But C-58 would give government departments the right to ignore information requests that they deem to be “frivolous or vexatious.” That exemption is being imposed without warning or justification, and is a power that should not be held by a government department that could benefit by wide interpretation in its own interest. It should be removed from the bill.

Once again, that was said by a well-intentioned individual who wants to see things change. He believes that things have to change. He thought that the Liberal government would be the one to bring about those changes, but that is just another disappointment for those who are unhappy to add to the list.

Another such person is Stephen Maher, who wrote the following in an article published in in iPolitics:

The proactive disclosure of some ministerial documents may be a step backward, because the decisions about what to release and what to redact will not be reviewable by the information commissioner.

That is similar to the point that was raised by the former commissioner, who said that, from now on, there would be no appeal process and that this was a step backward. I would like to once again quote Mr. Maher. He said:

This bill takes baby steps toward greater openness, but it does not offer what [the Prime Minister] promised—that government documents would be open by default.

In the business community, Fasken Martineau issued a notice, not to say a warning, to its clients concerning Bill C-58, which reads:

What if an application is made that raises grounds of contestation which do not respond to the third party's real concerns or interests? Despite this drafting, we expect that the Court will nonetheless allow the third party to file its own application to raise its concerns and interests—although it would be ideal if Parliament avoids useless battles in Court on the standing of third parties and clarified the provision immediately.

In other words, Fasken Martineau is saying that, as it stands, this bill will result in court challenges.

God knows, we certainly do not need yet another process clogging up our justice system, considering that this government is dragging its heels on appointing the judges that Canadians want and expect.

In Quebec, the justice minister has been waiting for months for this government to appoint 14 federal court judges. Of that number, barely half has been appointed so far. Until the appointment process is complete, dozens, hundreds, even thousands of Canadians awaiting a fair trial will not get one because the government is dragging its heels on this.

We certainly do not need to further clog up our courts by passing this bill. It may have been drafted with good intentions, and we are not against scrutinizing legislation that has been in effect since 1983, but we need to do things properly, which is not the case. Politically speaking, the Liberals should at least keep their election promise.

Is it any wonder that this bill only adds to the government's track record, which is a long list of broken promises? On top of that, just two years ago, this government said that it would not raise anyone's taxes, and yet what does it intend to do with its tax reform for small and medium-sized businesses? It intends to create even more obstacles and impose additional taxes on business, like the 73% tax, which is nearly 50% higher than the tax rate for large corporations.

Meanwhile, this government was elected barely two years ago on a promise that it would run small deficits of $10 billion. Where is the deficit now? It is about 80% higher than what the government promised. The Liberal Party also promised to return to a balanced budget by 2019, which happens to be the next election year. Now this government is abandoning its commitment, since it does not even know when Canada will return to a balanced budget. At no time in living memory has there ever been a government, a finance minister, and a prime minister who could not tell us when the budget would be balanced, except perhaps in times of crisis.

As many members will sadly recall, deficits became necessary in times of war, but it was the current Prime Minister's father who invented deficits in times of prosperity. That said, at least he had some idea as to when he would balance the budget. This government, however, has no idea when it will achieve that, which is a first in Canadian history. It has been one broken promise after another, and the same is true of Bill C-58.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is no question that our government has made a commitment to openness and transparency and better access to information. That is exactly what this bill is all about. In fact, in the member's speech, he talked about more openness and transparency for the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices. I want to assure the member that this bill would apply to the Prime Minister's Office, ministers' offices, and administrative institutions that support the work of Parliament.

There are things in this bill, including the elimination of the access to information fee, so now there would only be a $5 fee presented in the bill. As well, there is empowering the commissioner to order the government to release information, and a mandatory five-year review. Each of those three things was actually included in a private member's bill by the now Prime Minister, prior to him serving as Prime Minister, in Bill C-613. Also, the bill would support ensuring that the access to information is done, and would put in supports, so that we would get timely responses.

Would the member opposite support those things in the bill that would help Canadians gain the access to information that they want?

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the privilege to work with my colleague on the finance committee.

I recognize that the Liberal Party was involved in the campaign, saying that it would abolish the $5 payment to access information. Fine, the Liberals have done that and I recognize that. On the other hand, if people want to get information and the Prime Minister or the minister refuses, there is no call for that. That is not just me stating that; it is Mr. Marleau, who was the Information Commissioner in 2007 and 2008, who recognized that this bill had some openness. On the other hand, they open the door but they lock it just after opening it.

This is why we disagree with that. This is a demonstration of good ambition, goodwill, and a good idea, but when it is time to use it correctly and use it day to day, if the Prime Minister or the minister refuses to give information on some issue, there is no call after that. They cannot get back to l'appel, like we say in French. This is why this is a step in front or two steps forward. I do not know how to say that in English.

It is one step forward, two steps back.

I am not very good in dance, and certainly not good at the dance in English.

We have to fix it, and if the government is well intentioned, it should address this issue with seriousness.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it would have been encouraging if the member's party had moved on the kinds of amendments that he is now calling for. Canadians have waited for more than three decades to finally have a strong Access to Information Act so we would have a better reputation internationally.

The member is bright and I always appreciate his comments, so I think he might agree with me. We all recall another promise, and that was that this would be the last election of first past the post. The government then decided it would not deliver on that promise, and what did it do. It simply switched ministers and changed the mandate letter.

The Liberals have failed to deliver on the vast majority of recommendations by the commissioner or the committee, or most legal experts. Does the member think that the next action we will see is that that they can now just amend the mandate letters to the ministers and remove the higher bar for openness and transparency in government?

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to be clear. It is quite normal to review a bill that was tabled 35 years ago. That is fine. However, there is a thin line to define exactly where there is openness and also the reality of the power. The government must run the country, and it is very delicate to know exactly where to draw the line between what it wants to be published and having strong and important debate among the executive branch.

Second, the member talked about electoral reform. A year ago, I was in the member's riding in Edmonton. We had consultations there, and I was part of the committee. It was another broken promise. I said earlier that the list of broken promises is so long that I forgot to talk about that. I could talk about broken promises until tomorrow afternoon, and I would not be finished. Yes, that was another broken promise.

At the end of the day, with every political party when it breaks a promise—I have never broken any promises, but I know some other parties that have tried—there is a political price to pay. I hope and know that two years from now, Canadians will make the Liberal Party pay a huge price for this and all the other broken promises.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated my colleague's comments on the tax changes coming forward. We know that this rushed, overreaching action on the part of the government is going to hurt our economy, hurt middle-class Canadians, farmers, small businessmen, and accountants. These are the people who have been communicating with the government and with us on this issue. The response from the government has been to try to say that we have been misinforming them and that we are causing this issue to be overblown.

In the same case, we know that Canadians are concerned. We have comments that you quoted from democracy groups, professional journalists, and even a previous information commissioner. Are these also people the government is going to dismiss as being somehow responsible to us in our arguments as to why Bill C-58 is not a good bill?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Before we go to the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent, I want to remind hon. members to speak through the Chair and not directly to each other. It makes life a lot easier for all of us in the long run.

The hon. member.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to take my colleague's question. I think that all 338 members of the House have a lot of contact with people. When we talk to people in our ridings, and small business owners, they are very concerned with the appetite of the government that likes to get more and more taxes to pay for its bad judgment when it is time to spend money. When the Liberals run deficit after deficit, it has to be paid for. Now the government is trying to pick up a quarter of a billion dollars from the pockets of small business owners. This is all wrong.

I was in Alma last week, and business owners told me that the government's attitude was jeopardizing their business, their expansion plans and their opportunities to create even more jobs and wealth in their communities. The government wants to increase their tax burden, which could also adversely affect every worker's potential raise.

We do not have to see this as just a business class opportunity. Every business owner has employees. When one wants to give good wages to their employees, one does not have to pay more taxes. What the Liberal government is doing is imposing new taxes, and it will hurt small business owners. More than that, it will hurt all Canadians who work in those businesses.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent on his appointment as official opposition critic for the Treasury Board.

I will begin by quoting from the 2006 Conservative platform: a Conservative government will “implement the Information Commissioner’s recommendations for reform of the Access to Information Act”. That is what was said in 2006.

In 2013, the Information Commissioner said, “...there are unmistakable signs of significant deterioration in the federal access system.” What did the Conservative government do? Nothing. Zero.

Our Liberal government took a different approach and decided to act. We are proud to be the first government to bring significant changes to the Access to Information Act since it first came into force over 30 years ago.

The member opposite admitted that it is a step forward. Why does he refuse to work with us on this initiative, which is, as he said himself, very important?

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Vancouver Quadra for the quality of her French, and I would like to point out that my riding was named after a former prime minister, but hers was once represented by a former prime minister, the Right Hon. John Turner.

I unfortunately do not know the riding of the former president of the Treasury Board, who is sitting right in front of me, because federal riding names are so long. He explained that when our party was in government, we started the process to proactively make documents public. Did we get as far as some would have liked? We took some steps forward. Could more steps forward have been taken? Some may think so. We think that a party must wisely manage a government and a country, and we are very proud to have governed Canada for nine years and for three consecutive terms.

We had five commitments back in 2006, and we fulfilled them all.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to offer a few words about Bill C-58 and its proposed amendments to Canada's Access to Information Act. In fact, I would like to begin with some specific comments about the Information Commissioner's expanded role under these legislative amendments.

Among the many changes we have made in our proposed reform of the Access to Information Act, one that we believe is important, and that the Information Commissioner has herself requested, is for strengthened oversight of the right of access.

Currently, the Information Commissioner has no power to order a government institution to release records that have been requested under the Access to Information Act.

For example, if a requester is dissatisfied with the reduction of records in response to a request, they have the option to send a complaint to the Information Commissioner. This complaint is then investigated, and the commissioner can make a recommendation to the government institution to release the records.

If the institution does not accept that recommendation, the commissioner currently has the option to challenge the decision in court, with the agreement of the requester.

Under Bill C-58, the person would continue to have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner if he or she does not agree with how the government institution responded to the request.

This right would be clearly communicated to the requester as required by the act, but when it comes to the conclusion of the commissioner’s investigation of such complaints, the commissioner would now have the power to issue an order to release the record if she deems it was improperly withheld.

The government institution would have to release the record in accordance with an order from the Information Commissioner or, if it disagreed with the commissioner's order, go to court and convince the court, based on evidence it provided, that it has applied the act correctly.

Mr. Speaker, this is a first at the federal level. Never before has the Information Commissioner had the ability to order the government to release records.

If the head of the institution disagrees with the order, believing, for example, that the record should be withheld for security reasons, Bill C-58 proposes to give the head of the institution 30 business days to ask the court to review the matter.

In short, the new reforms to the Access to Information Act would provide the Information Commissioner with order-making power. This would transform the commissioner's role from an ombudsperson to a powerful authority with legislative power to compel government to release records.

These new powers include the authority to make orders about such things as fees, access in the official language requested, format of release, and decisions by government institutions to decline to act on overbroad or bad faith requests.

To enable the Information Commissioner to carry out this new authority, we will also be providing the commissioner with additional resources.

The improvements we are proposing will reinforce the act's original purpose and respond to the recommendations of the Information Commissioner to strengthen her oversight of the right to access.

The changes to the commissioner's role from ombudsperson to an authority with legislated order-making power will increase the commissioner's effectiveness.

This is a sea change in the way access to information works at the federal level, and we are taking the important step to strengthen government transparency and accountability.

We are committed to modernizing the act and making continual progress towards a more open and transparent government.

To that end, the legislative package we have introduced proposes a new part of the act that sets out proactive publication requirements for all areas of government. This will entrench into law the obligation for the government to proactively publish a broad range of information to a predictable schedule. It will apply across departments and agencies, as well as new areas such as the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices, senators and members of Parliament, institutions that support Parliament, and administrative institutions that support the superior courts and over 1,100 judges of the superior courts.

Making more government information publicly available and on a predictable schedule will promote accountability.

Like the Information Commissioner, we are aiming for increased openness and transparency across government.

At the same time, we recognize that proactive publication does not eliminate our responsibility to strengthen the request-based aspect of the system.

For that reason, we are also investing in tools to make processing information requests more efficient. We will support training across government for consistent application of access to information rules and we will provide written explanations for exemptions and exclusions.

We have also heard the commissioner’s concerns regarding overbroad or bad faith requests, those where the intent is clearly to obstruct or bog down the system.

Under very specific circumstances and subject to oversight by the Information Commissioner, government institutions will be able to decline to act on bad faith requests. Doing so will help government better direct its resources to responding to requests that reflect the original intentions of the act, making government more transparent, responsive, and accountable to citizens.

We are making significant reforms to the access to information system, while continuing to establish a relationship of trust between those requesting information and the government that can provide that information. The amendments will also add a new requirement to review the act every five years to make sure it remains current.

The first review will begin no later than one year after the bill receives royal assent.

In addition, we will have a policy requiring departments to regularly review information requests and to use that analysis to make more types of information more easily accessible. This analysis would in turn guide the five-year reviews to ensure ongoing improvement.

After 34 years, the time has come for the ATI laws and program to be revitalized. The reforms we are proposing affect the whole of government, including areas never before touched by the legislation.

They also provide greater powers to the Information Commissioner to oversee the access to information regime and the ability to order the release of records.

I call upon all members to examine, debate, and support the goals of this legislation and to continue to work together to strengthen access to information and make government more open, transparent, and accountable.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we believe it is unacceptable for the government to think that it can assess the motivations of those making access to information requests and make an evaluation about the quality of their motivations as the basis for whether or not that request is honoured.

A fundamental principle in a free, democratic society is that people have the right to request information. Of course there are limitations on that, if there are issues of national security and so forth. However, the principle that it is not the contents of information but rather the motivation of the individual asking for that information that somehow can or should be assessed by government, we would argue, is quite out of step with the way access to information is supposed to work in a free and democratic society.

Can the member agree that this is an impossible and dangerous road for the government to go down, assessing whether or not someone has the right kind of heart or disposition when they are applying for information? Should the government not instead focus its energy on providing information that people ask for, as long as there is not some compelling public interest in not providing that information?

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, after a decade of neglect, secrecy, and obstruction, the party opposite now purports to be a champion of access to information.

[An hon. member]

What?

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

We know the previous government operated as a one-man show that placed countless roadblocks in the way Canadians sought to know how their government made decisions. Our government is fixing that issue for future governments. This legislation gives order-making power to the Information Commissioner. This legislation codifies proactive disclosure for all parliamentarians.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Before we go to questions and comments, I know that hon. members have been gone for a while and perhaps forget the rules to some extent, but I would remind them to ask their questions and then wait for the answers, as opposed to coaching the person giving the answer or asking the question. I did not write the rules; I am just enforcing them.

The hon. member for Regina—Lewvan.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, in the last election the Liberal platform promised to extend the Access to Information Act to the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices. I am wondering if the member across the way could explain to us why this bill does not seek to extend access to information to cabinet ministers' offices.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, with these proposed changes, we are stepping up on our commitment to make government more open and transparent. Bill C-58 is the first major overhaul of the Access to Information Act in 34 years. It proposes to enhance the accountability and transparency of federal institutions and promote an open and democratic society. We have already committed to the principle of openness by default, and the changes we are proposing to the Access to Information Act are another step on that bold path.

In brief, here is what we are proposing. We would amend the act to entrench in law the requirement that government organizations proactively publish a broad range of information in a timely manner and without having to receive an access to information request; we would give the Information Commissioner new powers to order the release of government records; we would put in place a range of measures to improve the administration of the request-based system, an outdated system that has not significantly changed since the act came into effect in 1983; and we would make mandatory a review of the act every five years so that it never again becomes outdated.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this legislation would ensure that the Access to Information Act never gets out of date, as it is today, and that it would be mandatory for the act to be reviewed every five years. Can the hon. member explain to the House how this would increase openness and transparency?

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, our amendments would increase a new section of the act, part 2, requiring more than 240 government institutions to proactively publish key information that is known to be of interest to Canadians and that Canadians have a right to know. Under the provisions of part 2, we would extend the Access to Information Act for the first time ever to the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices, senators and members of Parliament, and to institutions that support Parliament and the federal courts. Proactive publication would include information such as travel and hospitality expenses, contracts over $10,000, service contracts for senators and members of Parliament, mandate letters, briefing packages for new ministers, question period binders and binders for appearances before parliamentary committees, and that is just the beginning.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I want to draw attention to what the member said. She said that this legislation would cover areas not previously touched by the legislation and that it would never again be out of date. However, the member has not answered the question, the big elephant in the room, and that is the breaking of an election promise again, wherein the Liberals indicated that there would be transparency and access to cabinet ministers' and the Prime Minister's information, and she continues to go around it.

We have another elephant in the room—it is getting very crowded here—which is what the reasoning is behind choosing to kick that can down the road and not fulfill their election promise.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, proactive publication not only increases the availability of government information but also increases transparency and allows citizens to more easily hold their government to account for its use of public funds. The current access to information system is under strain. The number of requests is rising at a rate of roughly 13% every year. The sheer amount of government information has risen exponentially. We have heard fair criticisms from Canadians about delays and inconsistencies in the current request-based system. Therefore, we are making investments that would improve the way requests are proposed, including updating the electronic processing tools government institutions use to respond to requests for information and proposing amendments to the act that would allow government institutions to work together to process requests more efficiently and quickly.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to take the third, or maybe fourth crack, with this member at asking the same question. It was a campaign commitment that the act would be extended to include matters that are ministerial and part of the PMO. It was also in the minister's mandate letter.

In fact, just last week, September 15, a Federal Court judge ordered the central bureaucracy that serves the Prime Minister and his cabinet to partially release pages of information that were central to the Senate spending scandal in 2013. The judge ruled that these had been wrongly classified as ministerial advice and improperly withheld.

Everything we have seen from NGOs and the Information Commissioner says that this legislation does not close that loophole. Therefore, I ask for the fourth time, could the member point us to the part of the act that tells us it is being extended to include cabinet confidences and ministerial information? Otherwise, we will have to say again that the Liberals have broken their campaign promise.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party has led the charge on openness and transparency. We were the first party to proactively disclose expenses. Now in government, we have unmuzzled scientists, made data open by default, and are now making substantial reforms to the Access to Information Act.

The information commissioners and stakeholders have long advocated for order-making powers. This legislation would ensure that the Access to Information Act never gets out of date, as it is today. It calls for a mandatory review of the act every five years.

The Access to Information Act regime is over 30 years old and has never been substantially changed until now. Our government is doing something that other governments failed to do.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today to be part of the discussion on Bill C-58. As many of the members of the opposition have pointed out with some degree of consistency and clarity, this is perhaps the best example of the legacy of broken promises by the government. This broken promise in effect comprises 31 broken promises. In the midst of my speech I will address how this is not just a simple broken promise. Rather, it affects the entire open government concept paraded by the Liberals in the last election and goes to the heart of the sincerity of the Prime Minister on this subject. Many of the new members of Parliament were not here in the last session when the Prime Minister was the leader of the third party. However, when listening to my speech, members will learn that this was a centrepiece of the Prime Minister's time as MP for Papineau. He seems to have forgotten his passions from his time in opposition.

My friend, the member for Kings—Hants and President of the Treasury Board, in his remarks on this bill last week spoke a lot about his time in cabinet and how proud he was to be in the cabinet of Paul Martin. What was absent in his remarks was that he is no longer in that cabinet but in the cabinet of the current Prime Minister. Possibly he did not work that into his remarks because he was handed the biggest broken promise of the new session. It is never fun to have a prime minister make a minister come to the House of Commons to try to sell a dead fish. That is essentially what this bill is.

I will remind the members who did run on the Liberal platform of their promise. We all remember the various hashtags used by the government in the last election, hashtags about hope, hard work, and real change. “Real Change” was the title of their policy platform. What was contained in that platform? I will quote, “We will ensure that Access to Information applies to the Prime Minister’s and Ministers’ Offices, as well as administrative institutions that support Parliament and the courts.” That was a real change in the section of their platform that talked about open and accountable government.

On the page before that in the document the Liberals also talked about giving real independence to and listening to government watchdogs, such as the Information Commissioner. Many previous information commissioners have provided commentary that the Liberals suggested they were going to act on. I am sure there are countless former watchdogs who are quite disappointed that the Liberals ran on this commitment but have fallen far short. If we look at the Liberals' campaign promise to earn the trust of Canadians, they said that the Prime Minister’s Office would be governed by access to information, as well as all ministers' offices. There were 31 different offices they pledged to bring under the umbrella of access to information. Those are 31 broken promises contained in Bill C-58. Of the litany of broken promises by the government, this is probably the most ambitious because there are 31 broken promises rolled into one.

I would love to have seen the emails about the Prime Minister's trip to a private island, along with the current Minister of Veterans Affairs and various members of Canada 2020 or the Liberal Party of Canada. I have a hard time distinguishing them. We know dribs and drabs about that trip because senior officials at the Privy Council Office had a hard time making sure that the Prime Minister could remain in touch. This was at a secluded billionaire's island. The Government of Canada had a hard time keeping up with the vacation ambitions of the Prime Minister. Had the Prime Minister kept his promise, I would love to have read a bit about what his senior officials thought and how they were pushing the government to accommodate this very unusual request.

Similarly, with regard to the investigations of the Prime Minister by both the Ethics Commissioner and Commissioner of Lobbying, it is unparalleled for a Prime Minister to be subject to one, let alone two, investigations in his first two years. I guess that is real change, and certainly a big change from Mr. Harper. There were no investigations of him over nine years by those officers of Parliament. Now we have two. I would love to see the emails of Gerald Butts and Katie Telford on how to handle the investigation of the Prime Minister's fundraising dinners with Chinese billionaires, the same ones who are building a statue of his father in Canada before the Prime Minister's government builds a statue and monument to the Afghanistan mission. The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation is going to make sure that Pierre Trudeau has a monument before the 40,000 Canadians who served in Afghanistan do. I would love to see a little bit of the commentary on that.

What we have heard from government members, and we are at the beginning of debate so will hear these talking points quite regularly now, is that instead of keeping their promise and providing that 31 offices would now be subject to the Access to Information Act, they are going to produce proactive disclosure. This is their key defence of their broken promise. They are going to release schedules, agendas, and draft question period documents and say those should satisfy us. No, they will not. As members will see, if they stay with me a few moments, this is far more than a broken promise in the real change campaign document to Canadians. Why is that?

I am going to refer to remarks by the Liberal MP for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, a good guy, I might add, a friend. In the last Parliament, he said, “It almost seemed that the Conservatives wanted to have a little more proactivity involved in the sense of what we are doing here with the Liberal Party of Canada, when in fact, we were the ones who brought forward far greater measures on proactive disclosure than this House has ever seen.” He gave a really good speech. I recommend that the member and some of his colleagues refer to it. In the same speech he said, “A country's access to information system is the heart of open government.” These are wonderful words by my friend from Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, the longest serving member in the House from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Why such eloquent prose? What was that member speaking about in the last Parliament? He was speaking about a private member's bill on reforming access to information. Who brought forward that bill? It was the MP for Papineau, now the Prime Minister of Canada, whose own private member's bill in the last Parliament championed open government and reform of access to information. When he spoke, no wonder my friend from Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame was so eloquent in his praise and prose. It was his leader's bill, his leader's raison d'être, as the MP for Papineau.

I always found the number of that bill, Bill C-613, interesting. All government officials are generally in the 613 area code, so I always thought Bill C-613 was kind of ironic. It was the open government bill. The actual name of the bill was an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act and the Access to Information Act (transparency). We know that when a member has a bill tabled and debated in the House, it is the most important issue to them.

We have seen great bills brought forward by passionate members of Parliament. For example, my friend from Cariboo—Prince George brought forward a national framework for post-traumatic stress disorder for our first responders. We have debated that framework, that passion of his, in this Parliament. In the last Parliament, when the Prime Minister was leader of the third party, what was his passion? It was access to information reform and open government.

Someone in the PMO should remind him of that and send him an email. However, we will not be able to see those emails because he is carving that out in these reforms. However, someone should remind the member for Papineau. He is still the member for Papineau. He is also the Prime Minister, and I respect that role. However, I am here to remind him what he brought to Parliament, when he would regularly grill the Conservative government of the day. I remember because I was in cabinet.

From the Prime Minister's bill on reforming and improving access to information, what did it start with? Proposed section 2 read:

2(1) The purpose of this Act is to extend the present laws of Canada to provide a right of access to information in records under the control of all government institutions in accordance with the principles that

(a) government information must be made openly available to the public and accessible....

That was the thrust of the Prime Minister's private member's legislation. In fact, it went on to talk about when it should be held back. I refer to paragraph 2(1)(b) of that bill, which stated, “necessary exceptions to the right of access should be rare, limited and specific.”

With this farce of a bill, how does it measure up against the Prime Minister's Bill C-613? It fails dramatically and terribly. Therefore, the hope and hard work the Prime Minister championed in opposition are long forgotten. His hopes and his promises on open government, which made it all the way to the Liberal platform, were dropped once he formed government. I hope Canadians see this for what it is. Once again, the photo ops and the hashtags do not match the conduct of the government.

I will leave the Prime Minister's Office with one last quote. The people of that office were not here with the member for Papineau in the last Parliament.

[Kevin Lamoureux]

I was.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

No, the people of the Prime Minister's Office were not here. My friend from Winnipeg is heckling me, but he remembers early on that Canadian taxpayers paid to move the Prime Minister's officials to Ottawa. I know they were not here. We paid for them to come after the Liberals won. I would like those officials to also look at proposed subsection 2(4) where it says:

In the event of any uncertainty as to whether an exception applies to a record requested under this Act, the principle set out in paragraph 2(1)(a) applies and the record shall be made available.

Paragraph 2(1)(a) is that, all “government information must be...openly available”. This was the Prime Minister's raison d'être in the last Parliament. He has now brought a bill, through his President of the Treasury Board, to the House that would get an F if it were graded alongside what he suggested, not just in the election campaign but as a private member of the House.

As I said, not only is this a broken promise, it is 31 broken promises because he said that every minister of that front bench would have to have his or office open to disclosure under the Access to Information Act. That was a broken promise for a couple of rows of Parliament.

He then said that the purpose was to always lean in favour of disclosure, that holding back documents should be rare and specific. In this bill, there is also a paragraph that says that, if in the opinion of someone, it is a frivolous request, he or she does not have to disclose it either. This is an exception that one can drive a truck through in what someone might consider frivolous. Therefore, the lofty language and goals of the Prime Minister in the last Parliament certainly did not make their way into Bill C-58.

My colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent did a great job in outlining our opposition concerns with the bill. However, I want officials in the Prime Minister's Office to remind the Prime Minister of not only his commitments in the election but his commitment to this Parliament. His only private member's bill was on access to information and reform of Parliament.

Whether it is Bill C-58 or his commitments to never use omnibus bills, and I have lost track of how of those bills we have had, and how many times the government House leader has brought forward time allocation, the rhetoric of the Liberals in opposition, when held up alongside their actual record in government, is hypocrisy of the highest order. This bill is probably the best example.

I do not like being the voice of doom, but every bill the government brings forward just gives me hours' worth of material, as a parliamentarian. Therefore, with my remaining time, I want to thank Madam Suzanne Legault, who served Canada with great distinction and capability as our information commissioner for many years.

Many of her recommendations and the work she did, at the vanguard of global, open government access to information, was the basis of the Prime Minister's bill and the Prime Minister's old thinking in this area. Once he was sworn in, he forgot all that. I am sure Madam Legault, like many other people, is disappointed.

Here is what she said when I happened to be at committee with her in the previous Parliament, in December 2014:

Over the years, I have also made recommendations to the President of the Treasury Board on various ways to advance accountability and transparency. I am very pleased that most of these recommendations over the years have been implemented by the government.

That was the information commissioner's testimony before committee in the last Parliament.

We heard the last Liberal speaker say that Stephen Harper was not in favour of open government, and that it was a one-man show. That is simply not true. That was a narrative the Prime Minister liked to bring forward and it led to his bill and his showboating on the subject. However, it was not the testimony of our officer of Parliament. That was her quote, that generally governments under her tenure had responded, generally the president of the treasury board had responded to modernization.

I hope the Liberals remove, from their talking points, the aspersions they are casting at Mr. Harper, because they simply are not true. I would refer them to the testimony of Madam Legault and her great record. I asked her some difficult questions that day and she handled them with capability and aplomb. She also ran her department very effectively.

This bill would give more resources to the department, and that is needed. In the last Parliament, I think she lapsed $30,000. I have literally never seen a department run so efficiently. It is impossible for government to meet all its estimates right on. There always will be a lapse or a request for more funds. The department ran a very capable program at a time. Under her watch, there was a 30% increase in access to information requests. That department used technology and a number of means to modernize.

Another thing I see lacking in the bill, and I spoke about this in the last Parliament, is that the Access to Information Act comes from 1983, when the Prime Minister's father was the prime minister. The cost for an access request was $5 in 1983. It has not changed, and it should. The testimony given by Madam Legault suggested that it was a $1,300 internal cost for each request. We want to have open and accessible government, but $1,300 is the internal cost.

With requests going up by 30%, we need to change that. In fact, 21,000 requests of all departments of the government are commercial in nature. I used to see this as a corporate lawyer, companies looking at regulatory issues would submit an access to information because there was no barrier to just firing in thousands of requests. With 55,000 requests, on average, per year, and 30,000 of those being commercial requests, that is $71 million in costs for law firms, accountant firms, and businesses requesting information.

I have always been an advocate of a zero cost for a member of the public, one of our great people interested in democracy, but more like a $25 or $50 cost for a corporation other than a media outlet. We actually could stop some of the frivolous requests being made and clogging the system. John or Jane public member would have full access, but more of a threshold to show we changed a bit since 1983

I would refer the Prime Minister and members of his government to his bill from the last Parliament. I hope we can amend Bill C-58 to capture some of the promises that clearly have been broken.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind viewers of this debate today and readers of Hansard that when they are watching or reading about the grandstanding and righteous indignation of Conservative members that it was the Conservative Party that put forward a promise in the 2006 election to reform the Access to Information Act and the Conservative Party did nothing to reform the act. With its culture of secrecy, that party fully exploited the weaknesses in the act.

Thank goodness we have a Prime Minister who is committed to access to information. We are reforming the act, including giving order-making powers to the commissioner of whom the member for Durham has been so congratulatory.

My question for the member is on his colleague's comments on frivolous and vexatious requests. He essentially said that we should not address that in this reform even though the commissioner and the committee recommended it, and eight provinces and three territorial governments have some variation of it. In the absence of frivolous and vexatious exclusions, the system can get completely bogged down with individuals, for example, ATIPing their ex spouses daily activities and emails.

Would the member agree that by removing those types of applications for information, the system could respond much better to the real access to information requests of ordinary Canadians?

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I hope the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra does not feel that a passionate, fiery, and well-researched speech is somehow grandstanding. I would suggest that grandstanding is a third-party leader introducing a private member's bill that he had no intention of following once he had the power.

I would refer the member to the comments made by Madame Legault during the last Parliament, when she could have criticized the Harper government. She said, “I am very pleased that most of these recommendations over the years have been implemented by the government.” Madame Legault wanted to see far more open government. She wanted zero cost for access. She wanted everything to be accountable, including the Prime Minister and his 30 ministers. She would obviously be disappointed, as would most of the Liberals who voted for them, if they voted on this promise.

The member asked about frivolous and vexatious requests. I provided an easy way to thin out the vexatious or frivolous requests by changing the fee structure, which has not changed since 1983. The fee has been $5 for everything. Maybe we do not charge the public and media—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

And the opposition members.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

My colleague is right, Mr. Speaker. Opposition members of Parliament of course.

Maybe we charge more for access to information requests from commercial enterprises that might be preparing to do a merger or are preparing due diligence documents for a deal. Lawyers and accountants are billing hundreds of dollars per hour and the Government of Canada is charging them $5 for something that costs at least $1,300 to do. That approach would be far superior from what we see.

The broad language in the bill right now further erodes the grandstanding promises made by the Prime Minister in the last Parliament and in the election.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I share the Conservative member's disappointment that the campaign commitment made by the Liberal government to close the loophole for access to information to the Prime Minister's Office and ministerial offices was not done even though that was in the Liberal mandate letters and in the campaign promise. I agree that Bill C-58 fails on that.

However, we have a bit more prehistory. In 2006, the Harper Conservatives campaigned on a promise that they would update access to information legislation, but they did not. The New Democrats introduced private members bills based on the recommendations by successive information commissioners. My colleague, Pat Martin, brought a private member's bill forward in 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2014, and the Conservatives voted against every one of them.

Why the change of heart now?

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when we are giving our speeches or asking questions or making comments here, we all focus on elements of our own past. I quoted the Information Commissioner and how she responded to how the government had responded to her recommendations. She said, “I am very please that most of these recommendations over the years have been implemented by the government.” I know that the member was not in the previous Parliament. However, she can refer to Madam Legault's comments.

Did the Conservative government do all of what was in Bill C-613, or in Pat Martin's private member's bill? No, it did not. I remember debating Pat Martin about one of his versions of the bill and suggesting that he bring the same disclosure he aspired to in government to his legal defence fund. Members might remember that from the last Parliament. He actually had unions contribute in a roundabout way, which I felt went around the rules for fundraising, to pay some of the bills for a libel action he had. I remember that debate. To his credit, Pat Martin did bring it regularly.

However, what I am highlighting today is the acute hypocrisy of the Prime Minister, because not only did we all see it in the “Real Change” document, and we have all referred to the Liberals' promise, but he brought a private member's bill forward in the last Parliament as the member of Parliament for Papineau. Just as we all bring bills or motions forward on areas we care the most about, that is what the Prime Minister said he cared the most about.

As I said, if we compare Bill C-58 to what he brought forward in Bill C-613 in the last Parliament, one cannot even recognize it. Certainly, at an absolute minimum, of the 31 broken promises, I think we all would agree that with respect to the Prime Minister's Office and all the cabinet offices, this is the most egregious of the broken promises. I am highlighting, based on my experience here in Parliament, where I think this falls short the most.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleague about a point of broader principle. The government's justification for many of the bills it brings forward often comes down to saying that it is modernizing or updating. Something has not changed in a while, so it is modernizing or updating it. However, very often in the process, its so-called modernization moves in the opposite direction from what it promised. We saw that in the spring with its desire to make unilateral changes to the House of Commons. It said it would update and modernize the House of Commons, but actually, it was trying to make the House less democratic. Usually when we think of updating or modernizing, we think of improvements to democracy and transparency. However, the government is moving in the opposite direction with this legislation, as with the legislation it brought forward in the spring.

I wonder if my colleague can comment on the disingenuousness of some of that language and how it is not enough for the government to say it is modernizing. It has to explain how it is modernizing and what the real impact of those changes would be.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my friend from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. Normally we would bring modernization forward in such a way as to see the improvements that are recommended either by officers of Parliament, such as Madam Legault and others, or by aspirational politicians of the past, such as the member of Parliament for Papineau when he was in opposition and wanted to see far more from government. Now he is not fulfilling that.

I would also direct my friend to an interesting comment. I quoted at length my friend from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, who was the democratic reform critic in the last Parliament, when the Liberals were the third party. He also suggested in question period to my friend from Muskoka, who was the minister at the time, that salaries and full contract details for members of the Prime Minister's Office should be disclosed. I would like the member from Newfoundland to go to the PMO and suggest to the senior officials that full details on salaries, contracts, and the email correspondence should be accessible under access to information, because certainly that is what the Prime Minister sought as modernization through his bill, Bill C-613. It is also what the member from Newfoundland asked the Conservative government to do with respect to open government. I hope the modernization my friend asked about, the aspirations of the Liberals when they were in opposition, will slowly start meeting the reality of the Liberals in government.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, if there was one question I was hoping to ask the member across the way, it was why the Harper government, in over a decade, chose to do absolutely nothing in terms of modernizing the act we are debating today.

I find it interesting that the government has brought legislation that would ensure more accountability, more transparency, and a better society as a direct result of the legislation, and both opposition parties, once again, have united in opposition to moving forward. The New Democrats surprise me. The Conservatives do not. I am a bit surprised. I thought that with the new leadership, maybe there would be a change. Conservatives do not listen to what Canadians want. They are out of touch with reality when it comes to Canadians and what they want to see in good government. It is being demonstrated once again today.

We have had a member stand up and spend his full time criticizing a very progressive, positive piece of legislation that would make a significant difference. We have to wonder why. The member across the way was a leadership candidate. I would have expected some recognition that the legislation we are debating today is moving us forward. However, there was no admission to that coming from the loyal opposition or the New Democrats.

Let me give them some advice. I was in opposition for over two decades.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

When the government does something good, it is okay to say that it has done something good. They can always try to improve the legislation, by all means. That is why we have standing committees.

The principle of this legislation is solid. It is positive. They should be supporting it. They do not have to be looking at the dark side in every aspect of life. This is a wonderful piece of legislation that would advance transparency and accountability. There are lots of good things in here they should talk about.

When I was in opposition and the member across the way was in government, I recall when the leader of the Liberal Party--

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Order. I want to remind hon. members of the House that the House rules are that when one person is speaking, we are very respectful to that person. We do not coach him or try to give him some ideas.

I will ask the hon. parliamentary secretary to continue.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to do a bit of a flashback, because my colleague across the way was also doing some flashbacks. When our current Prime Minister became leader of the Liberal Party, we were in third-party status. I am sure all of us will recall quite well a motion the member for Papineau, the leader of the Liberal Party, proposed back then. He was proposing that every member be subject to proactive disclosure.

I remember the leader of the Liberal Party asking for unanimous consent to do that. What was the response? Thirty-plus members of Parliament said they wanted proactive disclosure. However, the government of the day said no, and the New Democrats said no. We did not leave it at that. We asked again. The record will clearly show that this was the case. All we were really asking was that members of Parliament share with their constituents how much money they were spending on hospitality or flights, for example. It was very basic. We continued to hear no from the government and the New Democrats.

The leader of the Liberal Party then said that he was going to expect all his members of Parliament to follow proactive disclosure. We even allocated the resources necessary to ensure that Liberal members of Parliament did just that.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I hate interrupting my friend in full rhetorical flight, but he is referring to the Liberal leader's Bill C-613 in the last Parliament and suggests that it was about proactive disclosure. He has been saying this in the House, when the bill, which I quoted in my speech, does not take that approach--

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

As this is not in the realm of debate, I will refer back to the parliamentary secretary.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member knows quite well that it is not a valid point of order. Trying to attempt to change the topic is not going to stop me from telling the truth as to what actually took place. I know that the member across the way might be a little sore, because we remember that it was the leader of the Liberal Party back then that mandated that all Liberal MPs participate in proactive disclosure. As a party, we dedicated the resources to ensure that it would be the case.

A couple of months later, the Conservatives saw the light and agreed that because the Liberals were now doing it, maybe they should be doing it too. They succumbed to public pressure, or common sense, as we would like to think, and we had the Conservatives agree that they would buy into proactive disclosure. We were grateful at the time.

Our New Democratic friends, on the other hand, needed a little more persuasion. A number of months went by, and we introduced an opposition motion, which the government of the day supported. The Conservatives and the Liberals were onside. The NDP did not want to be the odd ones out, so its members supported it. We are grateful. Today we have proactive disclosure for members of Parliament. We saw that as a positive thing. Today the constituents we represent can, through the Internet, find out where or how much individual MPs are spending through proactive disclosure. Again, we see that as positive.

Bringing it forward to today, we are talking about an expansion of proactive disclosure. The leader of the Liberal Party back then suggested that we have proactive disclosure for MPs. It took a while, but eventually, opposition parties and the government of the day agreed, and we were able to implement it. Now we have the Prime Minister, through the minister, talking about expanding proactive disclosure.

There are a number of parliamentary groups that will have to participate in proactive disclosure: the Library of Parliament; the parliamentary budget officer; the Parliamentary Protection Service; the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner; the office of the Senate Ethics Officer; the administration of the House of Commons, including the Board of Internal Economy; the office of the Speaker of the House of Commons; the administration of the Senate, including the standing committee on internal economy; and the office of the Speaker of the Senate.

This would be legislated proactive disclosure for institutions that support Parliament.

When we think of the benefits of proactive disclosure, there is the natural benefit, the one that is the most visual of them all, and that is that people can now click into the Internet and garner information that was not there before. That is a direct benefit.

One of many indirect benefits would be that people would no longer have to put in a request, an ATIP. I would suggest that hundreds, if not thousands, of ATIPs would become redundant. They would not be necessary because of this legislation. I see that as a strong positive, because prior to our having proactive disclosure, when it came to members of Parliament, we had to ATIP the information. If we did not like the information, we could appeal it. It would take weeks, in some cases months, before we might get the answer.

Now what we see is a more all-encompassing approach to dealing with proactive disclosure. Why would the opposition not acknowledge that as a benefit, because that is something this legislation would do.

I started by talking about how important it is that we recognize the need for change. Liberals talked a lot about real change in the last election, and this is yet another piece of legislation that would implement real change. I highlighted one aspect and hope to highlight more, but I can say that this is the type of legislation that was meant when we talked about real change.

For example, the commissioner would now have order-making power for information. What does that mean? Today, the commissioner, on receiving an appeal and looking into a matter, might make the suggestion that the information should be made available, and that is the way it has been for decades. For the first time, we would now have legislation that would enable the commissioner to order that the information be released. There are all sorts of things that might have to be taken into consideration, which I will get back to in a moment, but that is an example of real change, in a micro way, in one piece of legislation that we have put forward. It is something that I would think opposition members would see as a very strong positive, and I question why they would not want to support it.

For well over 30 years, we have had ATIP legislation. This is the first time that there has been any real, substantial change to the legislation. Within two years of being in government, we have a cabinet and a caucus on this side of the House that is prepared to debate this legislation, ultimately send it to committee, and pass it, because we recognize there is a need to modernize and we are not scared to modernize legislation. When the opportunity is there, we are interested in doing that. This is something our Prime Minister talked about in the last election. He said that we want to modernize.

To modernize does not necessarily mean to say that it is absolutely 100% perfect. It is one of the reasons we have standing committees. However, I give full credit where full credit is due and I compliment the minister responsible for the hard work done thus far in presenting the legislation and my caucus colleagues for recognizing how important this legislation is. That is the reason the minister has the support to advance it even further.

We talked about the legislation sitting on our books for decades with no substantial change, no modernization. Now we mandate in the legislation that every four or five years it would be up for legislative review.

I have heard some concerns from across the way, to which there could be a lot of validity. I am not going to discredit the ideas in some of the comments made by my colleagues across the way, but I also recognize that there are two things one should take into consideration. One is that this government has demonstrated time and time again that if a member has done the research and the work and has come up with a good idea at committee stage, the committee has the ability to advance changes to the legislation. That is very important to highlight. When I sat in opposition, it was very rare. In fact, I do not think any opposition member actually got an amendment passed. The same cannot be said about this government. We recognize good ideas that can improve the legislation, and that is one aspect that members across the way might want to consider.

The other consideration is, of course, that every four or five years this legislation will come up for a legislative review. When we look at that, we realize that we have a government that is committed to the ongoing needs of modernizing this piece of legislation.

Why is this legislation so important to this government? I would argue that the primary reason is that the government believes in accountability. It believes in transparency. This is something that is not new, particularly to the Prime Minister. Virtually within days, if not weeks, of becoming the leader of the Liberal Party, he was advocating for more accountability on the types of issues we are debating with respect to this particular piece of legislation.

I hear the criticisms from across the way. I can assure members that when they look at the election platform, they will find within this legislation a genuine attempt to deliver on something that was important to all candidates, because these are the types of things that we talked about at the door. We wanted to ensure that there would be more accountability. However, that does not mean we are going to stop here. There are always opportunities going forward.

I will reinforce one of the things I made reference to in the past. I like it when I hear our Prime Minister talking about the importance of representing our constituents in our communities here in Ottawa, whether it is inside this chamber, in standing committees, or in our respective caucuses. On the Liberal benches, we take that quite seriously. At the end of the day, ideas and thoughts that are generated and talked about do, somehow, in some form, make others aware of what is happening in communities across the country.

I want to highlight one of the greatest strengths of this legislation. It is the order-making power for the Information Commissioner. I believe that is a significant aspect of the legislation. It gives the Information Commissioner the power to issue orders in relation to complaints under section 30 of the ATI Act, with the exception of some of the clauses.

Order-making power will not apply to self-initiated complaints under subsection 30(3). It provides the commissioner with the discretion to make orders in relation to disclosure of records after the commissioner has investigated a complaint and determined it was well founded. It provides that orders issued by the commissioner will not take effect for 30 days.

Members across the way have been asking about the Prime Minister's office and about influence within the Prime Minister's office. In terms of what the legislation is doing within the Prime Minister's office, it is important that we look at the requirements with respect to proactive disclosure, mandate letters, and revised mandate letters for the ministers. I really thought that was a fantastic initiative by our current Prime Minister.

When the Prime Minister first announced the cabinet and provided the mandate letters, it gave a clear sense of what all Canadians could expect of the Government of Canada's cabinet. I see that as a very strong positive. Now we would have briefing packages for incoming ministers, titles and tracking numbers of briefing notes for ministers, question period binders as prepared by the departments, and travel and hospitality expenses for ministers and exempt staff.

I am really happy with that. I can recall that during the proactive disclosure debate when I was in the third party, there was the idea that not only should we be having proactive disclosure for individual members but that it should be extended to include the cabinet of the Harper government.

There is so much more to talk about. I always appreciate the privilege of being able to rise and share a few thoughts.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Winnipeg is very enthusiastic today, but I am sure that there is no link between his enthusiasm today and the last poll.

The member said many times that we did absolutely nothing when we were in office. First, that is not true. More than that, let me read a quote from Suzanne Legault, who was Information Commissioner of Canada. She said this on December 4, 2014:

Over the years, I have also made recommendations to the President of the Treasury Board on various ways to advance accountability and transparency. I am very pleased that most of these recommendations over the years have been implemented by the government.

Why can the hon. member, with his 20 years of experience, not see the truth in the House?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, when it comes to polls, I let the professionals or dogs deal with them.

I think it is important to recognize that we have had this legislation for over 30 years, and these would be the first substantial changes. Yes, there have been some modifications over the years, some tinkering, but this is the first time we have seen substantial changes to the legislation. The good news is that within these changes is the requirement for the legislation to come before the House for review on a much more regular basis. It has been 30-plus years, and there has been modernization in the form of the Internet. When this legislation first came into being, the Internet was not around. At least, no one could actually use the Internet; it might have been usable in some space field.

Times have changed, and far too much time has gone by. The changes that we are debating today are long overdue.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as usual when the member for Winnipeg North gets up to speak, many things are said, some more relevant to the subject matter than others. I want to address some of the member's more relevant comments, which, in my view, were the ones around proactive disclosure. I just note that even those are a bit of a non sequitur, because of course there is no law prohibiting the government from proactively disclosing any information that it wants. The point of laws on access to information is for citizens to be able to get information that the government does not want to release.

I was on the access to information, privacy and ethics committee when we did a comprehensive review of the access to information laws. We made a number of recommendations. It was a unanimous report by the committee, but the lion's share of those recommendations is not in here. It is, frankly, a little misleading of the government to be touting the benefits of the proactive disclosure provisions within this legislation. It is to distract people from the fact that on the real substance of the matter, when it comes to access to information so that citizens can get information the government does not want to share, there is actually very little in this legislation.

I invite the member to stop trying to make the debate about proactive disclosure and to address the recommendations of the committee. He mentioned one recommendation, order-making power, that is in the legislation. That is a good thing that the committee recommended. However, we also talked a lot in the committee proceedings about the need to get rid of exclusions from the access to information laws, because when certain types of information, such as cabinet confidences, are subject to exclusions rather than exemptions, it means that the Information Commissioner cannot review whether that information was rightly not passed on to citizens who would want it. An exemption would allow the Information Commissioner to confidentially review the material and then make a decision as to whether the government appropriately withheld that information.

It is great to have order-making power, but it does not go very far if there is a loophole like the exclusions loophole, which is going to remain. One can drive a truck through it—in this case, a truck full of government documents that the government can say has been made advice to a cabinet minister just by driving it by his or her apartment. That is a terrible loophole. The Liberals have not done anything to address it. It undermines granting the Information Commissioner order-making power. I wish we could talk about some of those concrete things that actually have to do with access to information, rather than proactive disclosure, which the government is able to do at any time it wants and which does not require legislative amendments to do it.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, I have to disagree with my colleague from across the way in regard to proactive disclosure. Some would argue that if we have proactive disclosure and it is legislated, which is virtually what it took for the NDP to comply with proactive disclosure, even dealing with members of Parliament, a lot of information is made available that prevents many members of the public from having to put in requests for access of information.

At the one end, the member talks about whether we really need proactive disclosure. Absolutely, we need it. If we look at the last government, or even governments before that, there have always a been large numbers of requests for information that, under proactive disclosure, would not have had to be advanced. It is very important for us to recognize that.

In regard to the commissioner and their ability to order, again, that is a positive thing. The member wants to focus the attention on loopholes. Yes, there are cautionary measures within the legislation, which it is absolutely imperative to have. However, the principle of allowing the commissioner to now order the release of information, something they cannot do today nor have they had the authority to do for the last 30 years, again, we see that as a very strong positive. That is why we challenge opposition parties to recognize the value of the legislation and to support it. If they have ideas that they want to share at the committee stage, that is wonderful.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Winnipeg North made a case for why this is something our government is doing that is consistent with our platform and mandate. It is good public policy, and we invited members to help us with it. The contrast he pointed to was the 10 years when the Conservative government had put it in its platform and did nothing to change the Access to Information Act, even though it was its explicit promise. By contrast, in its very first year, our government has had an interim directive from the minister, which took away the fees that were preventing people from making requests. It made the case to the departments that information would be freely available by default and other measures. That was in year one.

In year two, we are making amendments to the Access to Information Act, and drawing on some key pieces that came from the commissioner's advice and from the committee. On top of that, there will the ability for a committee to study this so we can continue to draw on those good ideas. As the member pointed out, in the previous government, there was virtually never any amendments at committee. In our government, there are often amendments allowed at committee. Lastly, by 2018-19, there will be a full review of the entire act.

Why is this update to our access to information regime important, not just to the public or business community, but to opposition members and all members of Parliament having a timely and effective access to information regime?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague the parliamentary secretary brings up some wonderful thoughts. I concur with the underlying theme of the messaging she gave on this very important piece of legislation. We need to recognize that even with the House, the chamber, the many aspects of media relations and the stories we hear about, part of the democracy is ensuring we have access to information. That is critical in terms of helping overall good governance.

I would suggest that this legislation further enhances that. I have been the benefactor of many access to information requests over the years, whether it was here in Ottawa or in the provincial legislature in Manitoba. We need to recognize that this is a very important component when it comes to accountability, transparency, and good governance. That is why I and and many others within this chamber are fairly excited about the legislation. We have not seen any substantial changes to the legislation for over 30 years. It is a modernization, and I look forward to it ultimately going to standing committee. At the end of the day, we will have a more accountable, transparent system because of this particular piece of legislation. That is why I encourage all members to get behind it and vote for it.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-58, An Act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, today is the first day of Right to Know Week. Accordingly, it is a very appropriate time to reflect on the importance of access to information for good governance and advancing our democracy.

I will start by saying a few words about committees, because one of the arguments we have heard at considerable length and volume from the member for Winnipeg North was that the proposed legislation might not be perfect, which is why we have committees that can amend a bill. However, I think it is very important to note that the government has disregarded the recommendations of the access to information committee in drafting the bill. We have a lot of very good recommendations from that committee that have been left by the wayside by the government in putting forward the legislation before us, and so I think there is a problem there.

The second committee I would like to talk about is the government operations committee, because my perspective on the issue of access to information is very much informed by the work I have done with that committee, and specifically the study that we recently conducted on whistle-blower protection in the federal public service. In this case we have civil servants risking their careers, reputations, and livelihoods to bring forward information that is seen to be relevant to Canadian citizens and important to the proper governance of our country. I think it puts in perspective the whole notion of access to information. If we have our public servants going to these heroic lengths to bring forward information that will improve our democracy and safeguard good decision-making, then it is truly incumbent upon us as parliamentarians to come up with the best possible access to information regime so that this information can actually come out without people needing to take the risk of coming forward as whistle-blowers.

The government operations committee did put forward and table in this place a unanimous report, supported by all three major parties represented on that committee, calling for some very substantial improvements to our federal whistle-blower protection system. Those included a broadening of the definition of “wrongdoing” as well as the definition of “reprisals”, creating a reverse onus so that it would be an obligation of the government, as the employer, to demonstrate that disciplinary action taken against a bona fide whistle-blower was not a reprisal, rather than putting a whistle-blower in the almost impossible position of having to prove that it was a reprisal. We recommended better compensation for whistle-blowers to ensure that they are made whole, which would include covering their legal costs. Another aspect of that compensation is priority placement to other equivalent jobs in the federal public service, because once someone has blown the whistle, it could be very difficult and perhaps not very appealing for them to go back to work, quite possibly, for the person they blew the whistle against. Therefore, we think they need to be assured of some sort of alternative employment within the federal public service.

We are waiting with bated breath for cabinet's response to the committee's report on whistle-blower protection, which I would highlight as an important part of bringing forward the information we need. However, the focus of the legislation we are debating today is the access to information system, which is a means of bringing that information forward without requiring public servants to go through the arduous process of being whistle-blowers. All of this is to say that whistle-blower protection is critically important.

I would like to talk about three aspects of the proposed legislation. The first is the scope of the act. The second is exemptions from the act. The third is the difference between proactive disclosure and access to information.

In terms of the scope of the act, it is very important to recognize that in the last election campaign, the Liberal Party promised to extend access to information to the Prime Minister's Office and other ministers' offices. That was a really clear promise, in black and white.

The bill before us today does not do that. It is another broken promise. It is a very clear-cut case. Earlier today we heard a speech by the member for Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle. At least four different members of the opposition asked that government member why this bill does not extend the access to information provisions to the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices. There was no answer to that question. It is a pretty important question that we should be hearing some sort of a response to from the government side, if not from that particular member of Parliament.

This broken promise is becoming part of a pattern. We see the government's broken promise on electoral reform, the repeatedly stated notion that 2015 would be the last election conducted under first past the post. That is a very blatant broken promise.

We had the promise to close the loophole that allows half of the value of stock options to be exempt from personal income tax, which is another very clear promise the government has broken.

We had the promise to restore door-to-door mail delivery, again going back to the government operations and estimates committee. I was part of the committee that reported on the future of Canada Post and, indeed, recommended a restoration of home mail delivery. Many months later, the cabinet has still not responded to that report, which suggests to me that it is planning to break its promise on door-to-door mail delivery. At a minimum we can say that the government has not yet kept that promise. That is as charitable as I think I can be on that point.

We have a problem with the scope of proposed access to information measures for not including the Prime Minister's Office and other ministers' offices. This bill does nothing to correct that problem, much less keep the Liberals' promise to do so.

The second thing I want to talk about is exceptions to the act. Despite the idea of the right to know, the government can fail to provide information in a variety of ways. One of them, of course, is by delaying the release of information. In some cases, an extension of up to 200 days can make a pretty material difference in how useful the information is and to what purposes it can be put. I would just note that this bill does not do very much to correct those delays in releasing information.

Other exceptions to the act would include cabinet confidences and advice to ministers. Those sorts of things are fairly blanket justifications that the government can invoke to not provide certain information. Almost anything can be labelled “advice to the minister” or a “cabinet confidence”. The bill does nothing to correct those problems either.

Worse, the bill actually adds new grounds on which the government can refuse to provide information. Specifically, the bill would allow the government not to respond to frivolous requests or requests for information that are deemed to be in bad faith.

Earlier today my colleague, the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, did an excellent job in making the point that it is not reasonable for some government official to be in a position of having to determine the motivation of the person requesting the information. It is a very odd thing to expect that someone in the public service could determine whether or not a request is in bad faith, and reject it on that basis. I would add that to the list of questions we have not really heard much of a response to from the government today.

We have heard, however, a couple of times an example from the government side of what might be deemed a bad-faith request. In presenting this bill at second reading, the President of the Treasury Board gave the following example: “if an ex-spouse ATIPs his or her former spouse's work hours on a daily basis or their emails.” We also heard the member for Vancouver Quadra repeat that example in the House today.

This example is actually about privacy, and if we just use the acronym ATIP that the President of the Treasury Board used, it stands for access to information and privacy. Certainly we need to protect the privacy of people who work for the federal government and, indeed, of all Canadians, on whom the federal government may possess personal information. However, I would say that privacy protection should not be contingent on whether the request for information is deemed to be in bad faith. Therefore, this is actually quite a poor example from the government side. It would be a good example in favour of adequate privacy protections, but it is a very weak example in defence of this good-faith requirement to access information, because people need to have privacy rights that are very much separate from whether a request for their information is deemed to be made in bad faith. Again, the example that we have heard repeatedly is really about privacy provisions; it is not about being able to reject access to information on the grounds of bad faith. If there is a member on the government side who would like to ask me about that, I would be happy to discuss it further and perhaps consider what the government is really trying to get at here.

A third point that I want to delve into is the difference between proactive disclosure and access to information. Over the last couple of days, it seems that proactive disclosure is emerging as a new Liberal buzzword. It has not yet quite attained the status of the phrase, “the middle class and those working hard to join it”, and it maybe has not quite attained the status of a “whole-of-government approach”, but we have heard a lot about proactive disclosure. I was a bit surprised and disappointed that no member of the government has yet stood to say that this bill would provide a whole-of-government approach to proactive disclosure to benefit the middle class and those working hard to join it, because it was a missed opportunity to tie together all of the best buzzwords from the government side. However, the Liberals do have some speaking slots remaining today, so perhaps there is a member on the government side who is up to that challenge.

However, in all seriousness, when we talk about proactive disclosure, a cynical interpretation would be that if the government is required to disclose all of its briefing books, that would put officials in the position of essentially having to draft special briefing books for public consumption. I think there are limits to the value of proactive disclosure, but we can all agree that proactive disclosure is on balance a good thing. I do not think anyone on the opposition side is objecting to the concept of proactive disclosure, but certainly what we are saying is that proactive disclosure is no substitute for access to information, because proactive disclosure allows the government to prepare certain documents for public consumption and then put them out publicly. That is fine, and it is better for the government to do that than for it not to put forward material for public consumption. However, access to information is quite a different concept. Access to information is about giving citizens access to documents the government does not want to publish. Access to information is about giving citizens access to documents that were not prepared for public consumption. Therefore, while it might be a good thing to expand the scope of proactive disclosure, it is in no way a solution to the problems we have with access to information.

It is important in this debate to make a really clear distinction between proactive disclosure, which the government has been touting and talking a lot about, versus access to information, the right of citizens to access material the government is not putting out publicly. We need to keep those things separate. This piece of legislation amending the Access to Information Act really should be judged on the basis of whether and how much it improves access to information, not on whether the government might also be doing some decent things in the area of proactive disclosure.

I would like to reiterate. I started off by saying that for me, this whole debate is very much informed by the work I have done on the government operations committee, specifically our study of whistle-blower protection in the federal public service. We heard heart-wrenching stories of Government of Canada employees and contractors who lost their careers and their livelihoods by bringing forward information that was relevant to our democracy and to the governance of our country. If we have whistle-blowers out there making those kinds of sacrifices for the good of Canada, then surely it is incumbent on us as parliamentarians, on both sides of the House, to do everything we can to get the best possible access to information system so that as far as possible, information that is relevant comes out through that system, rather than requiring our fearless public servants to make these sacrifices as whistle-blowers.

That is the overall context for this debate and why it is so important to get this legislation right rather than saying that it is maybe a slight improvement over the status quo and maybe we can improve it at committee or in five-year reviews. This is a critically important thing. It is being redone for the first time in three decades, so we need to do a lot better. We need to have the best possible access to information system in our country.

I talked about three different aspects of the bill.

First was the scope of it, which continues to exclude the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices. The Liberal promise during the election was to extend access to information to include the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices. When the member for Winnipeg North stands up and says that the bill is consistent with what the Liberals talked about during the election or what they heard on the doorsteps, I do not know what he means, because it clearly does not implement what was in the Liberal platform.

Second were exceptions from the act. To me, exceptions include delays and the ability to exclude information based on cabinet confidence or policy advice to ministers. Thanks to this bill, those exceptions would actually be increased to include what are deemed to be frivolous or vexatious requests for information. As I pointed out, the one example we have heard in support of this point is really an example of the need for privacy protections, which should be there whether or not the claim for information is in good faith. That example does not stand up, and I am hoping that the government can bring forward something a lot more credible in support of this notion that officials should be able to reject access to information requests on the basis of some evaluation of the motives of the person making the request.

The final thing I talked about was the difference between proactive disclosure and access to information. Both might be good things, but they are not the same thing. We cannot allow the government's claim to be doing more proactive disclosure to overshadow the fact that it is not doing much at all to improve access to information, which is what the bill is supposed to be about.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the comments of the member for Regina—Lewvan, and I want to thank him for the measured, substantive approach he is taking to debate on this very important matter of improving our access to information process in Canada.

He made the point several times in his remarks that there is really no connection between the provisions to require proactive disclosure and access to information. I want to say that I could not disagree more. One of the key complaints about the access to information system, and one of the failures of the system, is the number of access to information requests that are not answered within the statutory time frames, as much as attempts are being made to do so. Why is that? One reason is that there are so many requests today. In fact, 10% of all the requests made in the 34 years this regime has been in place were made in just one recent year. There are an overwhelming number of requests.

What proactive disclosure will do is reduce the number of requests, so it goes directly to the heart of that key challenge for our access to information system's timeliness and effectiveness.

If proactive disclosure is required, not just policy, and it covers 240 institutions, plus members of Parliament, senators, the Prime Minister's Office, institutions of Parliament, and the courts, does the member not believe that this will actually directly assist in the improvement of access to information?

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I did not say that there is no connection between proactive disclosure and access to information. I said that proactive disclosure was not a substitute for access to information. Of course there is a connection. If information comes out through proactive disclosure, there might not be the need for it to come out through access to information.

There are also connections to the whistle-blower protection system, as I mentioned. That is another way government information can come forward.

Of course, there are many channels through which government information can become public, and there is some interplay between all those channels, but even if I agree with everything the parliamentary secretary has just said, that more proactive disclosure could reduce the number of access to information requests, we still need better rules for how the government handles those access to information requests. Simply reducing the number of access to information requests is not the goal. The goal should be to improve the way in which those requests are processed so that the maximum amount of information is released in a timely manner. For example, the bill gives the government new excuses for not divulging information. That is a problem, and it is not solved by more proactive disclosure of other information.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of concerns about this legislation, because it has been our experience already that the government is not being open and transparent. We can remember, on the carbon tax, when we requested information, that the Liberals blacked out information parliamentarians should have had access to. Constituents in my riding have put in access to information requests and have had to put them in 20 different times to get the actual answers to the questions.

I fear that there is a huge loophole here for the government to not be transparent, and I wonder if the member could comment.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree that there are big problems with our current access to information system. It is difficult for citizens to get government information, and often there are lengthy delays in obtaining that information, even when it is disclosed. My concern about the proposed bill is that it does not solve those problems. It does not solve the problem of delays. Maybe the parliamentary secretary is suggesting that by possibly reducing the number of requests, other requests could be processed faster, but there is no actual requirement to process requests faster.

The problem we often see is that government departments wait until the very last minute to provide the information. They wait until the deadline, and there is really nothing in this legislation to shorten that period in a significant way or to provide some onus to disclose the information more quickly when it is feasible to do so.

There is also the problem in the bill of giving the government yet more excuses to not release the information at all, including this very nebulous requirement that the request somehow be made in good faith, which I think would be a very difficult thing for the government to judge, even if it were acting completely in good faith.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it was a Liberal campaign promise to include the Prime Minister's Office and ministerial offices in the Access to Information Act. It was a directive in the mandate letter to the minister. It was the subject of at least five private member's bills, in the previous Parliament, brought forward by New Democrats.

I would like to hear from my New Democrat colleague what is lost, given the government's failure to include the PMO and ministerial offices in Bill C-58.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, clearly the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices are places where key decisions are made. A lot of the information citizens would want to access pass through those offices.

The fact that they are not subject to access to information is a huge loophole in the current system. It is a problem that has been identified by many outside experts and by non-profit organizations focused on access to information. It is also a problem that was identified by the Liberals themselves. In the election, they promised to extend access to information to the Prime Minister's Office and to ministers' offices. This bill clearly does not do it. Furthermore, we have not heard any kind of explanation from the government as to why it is breaking this promise.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the level of detail the member brings to this House from the committee work he has done.

If we are able to put information online and have less of a load on the departments, would that not help alleviate some of the member's concerns around whistle-blowers?

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, once again, proactive disclosure can be a good thing. However, I would suggest that it is extremely unlikely that the government will proactively disclose the kind of information that is being brought forward by whistle-blowers. It is very unlikely that the documents the government prepares for proactive disclosure will actually encompass the kind of information that people come forward and blow the whistle to release. That is why it is so important to strengthen the access to information system far more than this bill does. If we strengthened it and citizens could actually get the information, there might be less need for public servants to have to go through the whistle-blower process.

I think that improving access to information certainly could help to alleviate some of the pressures on the whistle-blower protection system. I am skeptical that more proactive disclosure will do so, even though I would agree with the member across the way that proactive disclosure can be a positive thing.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, today, September 25, is Franco-Ontarian Day. I want to extend my best wishes to all Franco-Ontarians and to honour this important day by beginning my speech in French.

Bill C-58 authorizes heads of government institutions to decline access to information requests if they are vexatious or made in bad faith. Those subjective criteria will be used to decide who gets access to information. This bill gives the Information Commissioner more power, which makes it much harder for those seeking access to information to obtain an investigation. In essence, this bill will make it harder for Canadian citizens, media, and opposition party members to access information. Do we live in an open and democratic country?

I would also like to point out that the Prime Minister promised the Access to Information Act would also apply to cabinet and the Prime Minister's Office. Bill C-58 is just another example of what Canadians already know: the Prime Minister is not a man of his word. He simply does not keep his election promises.

Suffice it to say, here we are. It is Monday, we are in Ottawa, it is hot, I am speaking, and we are discussing another broken Liberal promise. Therefore, despite the summer, not much has changed.

Before I go too far into the substance of this bill, being back from the summer and having not had the chance to do so yet, I want to quickly pay tribute to my friend Arnold Chan. It was an honour to serve in this House with him. One of the things that has not been mentioned in his many tributes is his great service as the chair of the Canada-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship Group. It was through the group that I was able to get to know him. His commitment to that cause showed his character, his willingness to invest in Canada's relationship with a relatively small country, yet a country that is hard pressed because of the challenges it faces with its neighbours. His commitment to engaging with that cause showed his principled approach to politics. I wanted to make sure that was mentioned as well. I certainly would associate myself with all of the tributes that have been made recognizing his contribution to this place, his commitment to raising the standard of debate, and the other very important things that were said.

To the issue at hand, we are debating a government bill that would make various changes with respect to the access to information regime. I was not here for much of last week because I was in New York. I had the pleasure of going to some UN meetings with the President of the Treasury Board, as part of the Open Government Partnership. It was an interesting week, leading up to where we are today debating this bill, to have and to hear some discussions with our international partners specifically about the question of open government, of the access of citizens to government.

I was particularly struck by a presentation that was made by the President of Estonia. She was talking about the link between open government and trust. She made the point, and it is obviously true if one digs into it, that the mechanisms of open government, the structures and institutions of open government, can really only have meaning and be effective if they are associated with a culture in which people trust and have reason to trust the government. People are not going to share information with a government that they do not trust. They are not going to trust the quality of the information that they receive if there is not an underlying sense of being able to rely on the information, that they can rely on its word and on its commitment to a credible process. In other words, open government is a process, but it is also about a mentality, not just about a set of institutional changes. That was the case that she made, and I found it resonated with me and many of the other people in the room.

I say that because it is particularly paradoxical today. We are debating a bill that purports to be about the opening up of government, where the government is breaking faith, breaking trust, with the people who elected it by going back substantively on a promise. Of course, as colleagues of mine have said, we have seen many cases of the government breaking its election promises. However, it is particularly notable in this case when we are discussing an area that is supposed to be all about trust, about open government. The government is saying it is trying to open it up, and at the same doing it in a way that undermines a clear election commitment that it made.

Unfortunately, the government's unwillingness to take the promises it made seriously has undermined many people's trust in government and faith in the political process. Therefore, for those in the House who are interested in substantively advancing the values of open government, it is not just about institutional changes and structures, it is about following through on one's commitments. It is about respecting the trust that people have given, which is the basis for open government, as well as some of these institutional changes. I want to put that out as a kind of contextual framework for the conversation. Again, I think people would be disappointed anytime that they see the government breaking promises. There have been many instances of that, but when it is a process around open government, it is particularly ironic, and goes that much further in undermining people's trust in government.

Having said that, in terms of an introductory set-up, I will talk about the substance of the legislation.

Bill C-58 deals with access to information, which is the right that citizens have to file requests to the government to get information about what is happening inside of government. This is information that may not be proactively disclosed but that may be available. It is an important tool for opposition parties that are holding the government to account. Accessing information from the government is something that we do on a regular basis. It is also something that civil society organizations, academics, and ordinary citizens do. People have a range of motivations for accessing the information. As I said earlier in questions and comments, and I will come back to it later, it is not for the state, for us as parliamentarians, or for government ministers to judge whether someone's desire for accessing information is reasonable or justified.

The law ought to prescribe people having a right to certain information, to know how government operates and what the government is doing, and then it is up to them to decide how, when, and for what to use that information. I think that is an important principle. Obviously, certain information cannot be made available through access to information requests. However, we should not try to create a situation where the government is evaluating people's motivation and subjectively being able to determine whether it will give that information, based even on who the person is making the request.

Bill C-58 proposes various changes to the framework for access to information. I will mention a few of the particular aspects of it, and then I want to develop them.

There was a promise from the Liberals during the last election campaign. They said that they were going to extend access to information to activities within ministers' offices and within the Prime Minister's Office. This proposed legislation would not do that. The Liberals are breaking their commitment to having access to information include ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office. Unfortunately, they are going back on a very clear commitment yet again.

Under the proposed act, we would have a situation in which the government could refuse any access to information request that it regards as being vexatious, made in bad faith, or as a misuse of the right to request information. However, when we think about a vexatious request or a request made in bad faith, it is according to whom? In a free society, an opposition party, a member of the media, or a third-party organization might make an access to information request for no other reason than because they wish to politically embarrass the government. Certainly I would never make an access to information request along those lines, but I have heard of this maybe happening.

It is part of free democratic debate that people can access that information and use it as they see fit. With regard to exposing what is happening in government, even if the motivation of the person is purely to embarrass the government, that embarrassment may well be in the public interest, for the public to know what the government is doing behind closed doors and to hold the government accountable for that.

However, it begs the question of vexatious and in bad faith according to whom, because generally we accept that open information is in the public interest. It is consistent with the comment that the information be out there regardless of why it was requested in the first place or who is accessing it. The paradoxical situation envisioned by this is one in which perhaps I, as a member of the opposition requesting certain information, could be denied that information on the outlandish assumption that I am requesting it in bad faith, but that with someone else who requests exactly the same information, it is going to be presumed that they are not.

It invites the government to make determinations on the basis of motivation. However, more than that, it gives it the subjective power to make that determination. It may well be that it would claim that a request for information is vexatious or in bad faith, when in reality it is simply that the government department or minister in question does not want to see that information go out.

This is a problem. This is a troubling standard or mechanism for making determinations on what information goes out. We have the breaking of a promise and we have the introduction of a subjective standard that asks the government to psychoanalyze the motivations of the person seeking that information. These are two very clear and strong reasons for why not only our party but the NDP as well are opposing this. We both feel that these things are concerning.

Folks may have a range of different opinions about who and what should be subject to access to information, but the reality is that the Liberals, when they were in the third-party position, had the ability to engage in those debates internally, to think about what was and was not appropriate in the context of access to information, and to put their conclusions into their platform. That was what they offered to the Canadian people as their commitment of what they were going to do and how they were going to move forward. It was clearly there, and yet they went in the other direction. They totally reneged on it.

I want to note that this is not the first time we have seen the government break its election promises. There may be a record being set right now by the government in terms of the complete disregard for its election promises. Probably the most well-known and discussed example is the Liberals' commitment with respect to changes to the electoral system. They said that 2015 was going to be the last election under first past the post. Unless someone is planning for us to stop having elections, that promise will not be kept.

The Prime Minister, in the context of pulling back and declaring his intention to break that promise, said something to the effect that they were going to do what they felt was in the best interests of Canadians, not simply try to check a box on a platform. It begs the question then of what in the world the point of the platform was in the first place. The Liberals are supposed to make that public interest evaluation before they make the promise. They are not supposed to make whatever promises they think will get them elected and then make a public interest evaluation after that. That is the whole point of elections. The public evaluates what we put in front of them and makes that determination.

We were saying at the time that if we were going to change the electoral system, we would need to have a referendum. The government was somewhat unclear, but it was trying to get a particular result in terms of an electoral system, a runoff ballot. It became clear in the consultation process that nobody really wanted it. There were people talking about proportional representation, about the status quo, but it was only the Prime Minister and those around him who were talking about this runoff ballot.

When the government realized that it was not going to get that, rather than having a referendum, rather than taking seriously the recommendations of the committee, it decided it was just going to tear up the whole process. This was a broken promise that broke trust in the government. It left a lot of people disappointed and cynical about whether or not the platform commitments were meaningful.

On a lot of people's minds right now is the government's plan to change the system around small businesses and significantly increase the taxes they face. I should remind the government that this is also at odds with an election promise. It is hard to believe now that they promised to reduce taxes on small businesses. They have not talked about that one very much.

All three of the major parties in the House promised to move us to a small business tax rate of 9%. Then the government effectively raised taxes on small business initially by saying it would leave the tax rate at 10.5%. That was one broken promise to small business.

The Liberals also eliminated the hiring credit, which was specifically an incentive to encourage hiring. It is not something that I heard about from the Liberal candidate in Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan during the last election. Did they say they were going to eliminate the hiring credit for small businesses and make it harder for them to hire people? What about that idea? It did not come up in the forums. It did not come up in what they were saying while knocking on doors.

Not only did the government take those steps, but now it is contemplating the largest change to the tax code that we have seen in a long time. It is a change that virtually everybody is against. Not a single person has contacted my office in favour of the proposed changes. Probably now that I have said that, somebody somewhere will, but I have received an overwhelming amount of correspondence in opposition to these changes. This completely goes against the commitments that the Liberals made. During the election they talked about lowering taxes for small business.

The Liberals made other major economic promises.

They made a clear commitment to run $10-billion deficits in each of the first three years they were in government and then balance the budget in the final year. We did not think that was particularly prudent even as explained, but it was what they described as modest deficits. They have completely blown those numbers out of the water, by orders of magnitude. We are looking at not three years of projected deficits but at decades of projected deficits under the current plans of the government. As usually happens, it will take a Conservative government to clean up that mess.

It is hard for me to imagine how government members justify this flagrant dishonesty, whether we are talking about the commitments made with respect to ATIP that are now being ignored, the commitments made with respect to electoral reform now being ignored, balanced budgets now being ignored, or the protection of small business now being ignored. There are many other less publicized but still important examples of the government not respecting its commitments.

The Liberals stand up before voters and tell them what they are going to do, but as soon as they get into power, they come up with all kinds of excuses. On the economy, they usually say the situation has changed, that they did not quite anticipate how bad things were, but we could look at all of the independent analyses that say the budget was balanced before the Liberals came to power. The information that shows there was a surplus when the Liberals took power was there, and it is still clearly there.

With respect to ATIP, there is just no explanation, because there is no plausible claim that circumstances on the ground have changed. We are not talking about something that changes without the government changing it. The Liberals are making a decision to renege on their promise.

In the time I have left, I would like to highlight one more time that the government can refuse any ATIP request. Its only justification has to be that it suspects the good faith of the person making that request. I suspect that after this legislation passes, we will have many opposition ATIPs, many civil society ATIPs, many media ATIPs for which the motivation of those putting them forward will be suspect.

In a free society, government does not deny people information because it does not think their motives are pure enough. That is not how open government is supposed to work. That is not how government builds trust.

On that basis, we are opposing this bill.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, the remarks from the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan give me yet another opportunity to celebrate the fact that our government is keeping its promise made in the election by putting forward amendments to the Access to Information Act—for the first time in 34 years, I would remind the member opposite—and doing essentially what we had promised, which is giving order-making powers to the commissioner, making investments to improve timeliness, and putting the Prime Minister's Office, ministers' offices, and many other offices under the act through the proactive disclosure measures that will address the kinds of information that are most frequently requested in access to information, thereby reducing the gumming-up of the system.

It is also important to contrast what our government is doing with what the previous government did. The member may not have been there. I would like to draw his attention to the Information Commissioner's report of 2014 and her findings and recommendations, in which she investigated interference by political staff in the access to information process. Her first main conclusion is that there was improper involvement of ministerial staff members in the processing of five out of the eight access requests that she was sampling and reviewing in depth.

This is a case in which ministerial staff who had no authorization were rescinding the provision of information that the ATIP staff people had already agreed to disclose.

Second, what was also happening was a failure to comply with statutory duty to assist. For the member's information, just to make sure he has a balanced view of what is going on here, the ministerial staff who were not authorized in any way to be involved with this were holding up access to information packages that had been prepared by the department and were ready to go. They were holding them up from five days to a month for political reasons.

I could go on, but I would like to ask the member a question on this very constructive approach to reviewing and revising this act. Will he be part of a positive approach in terms of fine-tuning and bringing forward the ideas he has to the committee, where he could present them to a government that actually listens in committee and considers amendments?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that was an unusual intervention from the parliamentary secretary, to say the least.

She told the House that the government is doing “essentially” what it had promised. I am not sure what “essentially” means in that context, but that appears to be quite a modifier, because clearly the government is not doing what it promised. If it is doing essentially what it promised, perhaps that is supposed to remind us that it is doing the opposite of what it promised.

Let us be very clear: applying proactive disclosure to ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office in certain particular narrow cases is not at all the same or even close to allowing the public to use access to information in ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office in the same way that it would for other parts of government.

In contrast to the clear statements in the Liberal platform, this legislation treats ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office in a completely different way. It does not in any way apply the Access to Information Act to them. It is misleading. What the parliamentary secretary has said is essentially untrue.

I am not going to say that the handling of ATIPs was always perfect under the previous government, although I think the parliamentary secretary exaggerates the point. However, let us be clear about what the legislation is proposing to do. It is proposing to now give the government the power to deny any claim. In other words, it gives them the ability to interfere, to block access to information requests on the basis of specious claims or vexatious claims or bad faith or bad motivations.

The government is changing the nature of the system to make it worse. That is completely different from anything that was even alleged to have happened in the past.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague's speech, and I share many of his concerns. However, I was taken aback when he said that only a Conservative government can set things right.

We are talking about a bill that has not been amended in 35 years, so I wonder why it is that nothing happened under the Liberals or the Conservatives and why it was not until NDP members introduced bills to update the Access to Information Act in 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2014 that things stabilized.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the important point to underline with respect to access to information is that the government made clear commitments with respect to changes that it said were in the public interest, and many people voted for the Liberals on the basis of those changes. Those were not commitments that the Conservative Party ever made. We made a range of other commitments in our previous election platforms, and almost without exception, we kept the commitments we made to Canadians.

My point with respect to those particular changes is that one can debate the pros and cons about allowing access to information requests in political offices, but at the end of the day, this was something that the party opposite very clearly promised to do and that we now know it has no intention of doing.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan to be very earnest—at least, I believe he is—and I enjoy listening to his speeches, but I have to say in that light that I am surprised he takes issue with the definition of “vexatious” and the commissioner's authority with respect to that.

I say that for a couple of reasons. First, we know that vexatious requests plug the system up. We know there are requests that are vexatious and that as a result other legitimate requests become plugged up, and it then takes time for those requests to be responded to. As someone who has been on the other side of an FOI request, a freedom of information request, I know what is involved in terms of someone making a request. It is time-consuming and it takes up a lot of energy, which is misused when looking at vexatious requests.

I am asking the member what alternative he would suggest for dealing with situations of vexatious requests that will not be helpful at all. I do not agree that we have to necessarily go to the assumptions of the people making the requests. What alternative can he provide that would stop the system from being gummed up by these sorts of requests, resulting in delays that are not fair to other people who are waiting with legitimate requests?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there are a few points on that.

It was interesting that even in exhorting us to be aware of the problem of vexatious complaints, she did not provide any kind of definition for “vexatious”. That is the problem, is it not? It is a difficult thing to define, and it will be defined subjectively by the government.

She mentioned that a lot of resources are used. A lot of resources are used in terms of any access to information request, not just ones that are “vexatious”. That is the price of living in a free and open democracy. Parliament consumes a lot of resources as well, and I think most of the time they are well spent.

In terms of alternatives, my friend, the member for Durham, made some excellent points about how the cost structure could be made to better reflect the costs of developing responses and to act as something of a disincentive. In other words, if someone is asking for a great volume of information, then perhaps there is a way of building that into the cost structure that does not deny the person the right to access that information but is reflective of the reality of that cost.

In any event, I think that for the government to be able to choose to deny, period, those requests on the basis of potentially specious claims of vexatiousness is uncalled for in a free and open society.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Brandon—Souris, Taxation; the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, Human Rights; and the hon. member for Bow River, Taxation.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Edmonton West.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Calgary Heritage.

I am pleased to speak on Bill C-58, which would amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act, also known as another broken Liberal promise hidden behind talking points peppered with key words like “open by default”, “transparency”, and “historic”. That is just the working title.

This bill demonstrates once again that the lofty rhetoric of the 2015 campaign on openness, transparency, and accountability was just that: rhetoric. Rhetoric is defined as language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content. That is pretty much what we have here with this bill.

That said, there are components of the bill I agree with. First, giving the information and privacy commissioners more resources to do their jobs properly and more power to do them effectively are both good. In her recent annual report, the Information Commissioner described the current condition of access to information succinctly as, “there is a shadow of disinterest on behalf of the government” in transparency and accountability. Her conclusion was no more complimentary in stating “that the Act is being used as a shield against transparency and is failing to meet its policy objective to foster accountability and trust in our government.” Hopefully she can use the minor positive changes in this bill to transform the act into something more meaningful, because that is essentially where the good parts stop.

Moving on to the bad, let us first talk about some of the problems with the current system. Timely access to information is a key characteristic of a well-functioning democracy. The word I want to underline in this statement is “timely”. If an access to information request takes months or even years to fulfill, the government has failed in its responsibility to be accessible. This legislation does not prevent requests from taking months or years to be completed, but, amazingly enough, enables the process to take even longer. That is unacceptable.

I am an avid user of the Access to Information Act. In the year and a half since I was elected, we have submitted over 60 ATIPs. I freely admit that we like to take advantage of the opportunity to get information from the government. Take my words seriously when I say that the Liberal government is unbearably slow in responding to ATIP requests.

As I mentioned, since we were elected we have filed over 60 requests, and only half of them have been completed. Some were filed in March of 2016 and remain outstanding over 18 months later. Here are some of the other outstanding requests: as mentioned, March 17, 2016, 18 months; August 19, 2016, 13 months; September 2, 2016, happy birthday to it, as it has been over a year now; two filed on January 31 , 2017, nine months; and April 6, 2017, five months. We have over a dozen ATIPs that we filed in the last four months that are still outstanding.

The government promised to be better, to set a gold standard and exceed it by a mile. Exceed it? It still has not left the starting blocks.

What has been the government's response to this? It wants to give heads of government institutions the ability to decline requests on the basis that they are vexatious or made in bad faith. Who is going to define vexatious? Who is going to ensure that the government heads are not declining requests that are vexatious to the government or departments because they would embarrass them and are in fact requests for information that the public needs to know, such as our ATIPs on the Phoenix issue that showed very clearly that the government was told two months before it pulled the trigger on Phoenix to clear the backlog, which it ignored? Under these rules about vexatious requests, the department would have been able to cover that off.

Another ATIP we had on Phoenix had the CFOs from literally every single government operation—Transport, Public Services, Agriculture, Finance, and Revenue—all stating very clearly not to go ahead with it, that the training and testing were not done. The government went ahead. Again, without ATIPs we would not have found this. Giving the department heads or the government the opportunity to block that would cover this all up.

At a legislative briefing back in June, my staff asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board if ministers would be able to decline requests using the same clause. The parliamentary secretary refused to confirm that ministers would not have that power. This is ridiculous. Theoretically, every request filed by someone not in the government is vexatious or made in bad faith in a way. The government has so far worked incredibly hard to hide anything it can, everything from errant ministerial limo expenses to deep-pocketed donors to the Prime Minister and the proper analysis completed by the department on which the policy was based, and the true cost of the Prime Minister's vacation to a billionaire's island.

I have no doubt that it will use these new, poorly defined and inadequately described powers to declare as much as it can to be in bad faith. Never fear, the Liberals say, if a person disagrees with the Liberal denial, he or she can appeal to the commissioner or go to the courts. The latter is truly laughable. As we have heard repeatedly, the court system is so bogged down with cases and understaffed by qualified judges, almost exclusively because the government is unable or unwilling to appoint judges for some reason, that accused murderers are being set free. I spoke to a lawyer the other day who was complaining that it was taking him four years to get a single court appearance for a civil case and that the government was saying that if he has an issue with that he can go to the courts to get timely access. I do not think so.

My point is that the system of denial, appeal, denial, appeal could take a process that already takes upward of 18 months or more and counting to two years, three years, or four years. The beauty of this legislation for the government is that there is no upper limit on timeliness. However, it is not the same for the public or the opposition. The government claims that it is ensuring it is open by default. That is patently false. Open by default would include setting an upper limit, after which the government releases the requested information. This legislation ensures that the Liberals can continue moving the upper limit as long as is politically convenient.

The next ridiculous provision is proactive disclosure. This one is great to discuss, as the minister touted proactive disclosure in his press conference introduction and was lambasted by the media for his excessive optimism. The legislation tends to create a new part providing for the proactive publication of information of materials related to the Senate, the House, parliamentary entities, ministers' offices, etc.

I will quote John Ivison for the National Post because he summarized these provisions better than I can. He stated:

The information that will emerge from briefing notes or Question Period binders is sure to be as sanitized, and therefore useless, as the average sterile government press release.

Having read numerous iterations of the question period binders for the Minister of Public Services and Procurement, I cannot imagine what an even more sanitized book would look like. I wish I shared the optimism of the President of the Treasury Board in his belief that the legislation will produce any outcome other than what was predicted by John Ivison. The Liberals believe that proactive disclosure will help ensure that governments remain more accountable, and the legislation includes publishing ministerial mandate letters to confirm the government's priorities. Theoretically, this will make it more difficult for the Liberals, or any government, to cavalierly disregard its promises.

How did that work out, practically speaking? Does publishing mandate letters force the government to keep its promises? Remember the debt and deficit promise? That was in the finance minister's mandate letter, which was blown off. The electoral reform promise was in the democratic institutions minister's mandate letter, which was blown off. What about the promise to fix Canada Post, which was in the public services and procurement minister's mandate letter, and to complete an open competition for the fighter jets within the mandate period before the mandate finished in 2019? Maybe it should have said to commit to a sole source purchase of an almost out of production plane with absolutely no parts made in Canada, and at the same time start a trade spat with Boeing, and to make sure to use taxpayer money for bonuses for the billionaire owners of Bombardier. I think that is a promise the minister can keep from the mandate letter. What about the promise to modify the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act? That was in the Treasury Board Minister's mandate letter and is also a failure.

The Liberals have clearly demonstrated that they do not care about mandate letters. They will disregard whatever promises happen to be inconvenient at the time. So much for proactive disclosure.

John lvison summed up his thoughts decisively when he stated:

It’s a farce, and...[the minister] has been around long enough to know the changes he’s just unveiled will not make the slightest difference to helping citizens understand the government for which they pay so richly.

That is it. Apart from a few other minor amendments, that is all the legislation intends to do. Have the Liberals lived up to their promise to bring the legislation into the 21st century? I will let the House know when I get my ATIPs back, perhaps sometime in the 22nd century.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I note with interest that the member opposite complained about the length of time it takes to receive the information requests that have been put in. With all due respect, I would like to remind the member that it was his party that was in power over the last 10 years and did nothing about it. However, parts of this legislation go to the very concern the member has about the time it takes to access the information. We know that proactive disclosure will apply to the Prime Minister's Office, the ministers' offices, and the officers of Parliament. As well, the commissioner will have the ability to render certain requests vexatious or having been made in bad faith. These measures will help with the timing and processing of the requests made, which is the member's concern. Therefore, if he does not agree with these measures, what solution can he offer to speed up these files? I hope his response will differ from the suggestion by the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan that the rich can pay while the poor are just out of luck.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my suggestion is that perhaps once in a while the government could keep its promises on this issue. The whole government, including the member, appears to have a bad case of “whataboutism”. Every time an issue is brought up about its failed and poorly thought out legislation, it responds with, “But what about you guys 30 years ago? What about when Mulroney was in power; why didn't you fix it then?” I hate to mention to the member that it is incumbent upon the Liberal government to be responsible and do things properly to fix it. It cannot just throw out horrible legislation and say, “Yeah, it's lousy, we admit it, but what about the fact you guys didn't fix it 10 years ago?” It is shameful that it is suffering from “whataboutism”. Perhaps it should look at addressing the issue and this bad legislation.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to comfort my colleague by letting him know that I have put in a few ATIPs and did get answers back. However, they were all talking points, blah, blah, blahs and not worth receiving.

The question I have for him has to do with what people can do. In his speech he talked about the commissioner and the courts. The concern was that the courts are letting murders and sex offenders go because it appears that the Minister of Justice cannot appoint enough judges. I have that concern too, because we have discovered from studying the marijuana legislation that all charges for cannabis possession will be dropped after a year. Based on the time of year, that is like saying that nobody will be charged for anything.

However, I am wondering if we still have a commissioner. I think we were missing a few commissioners. Could the member comment on that?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, although this is embarrassing, I will be honest and say that I do not know if we have a commissioner.

We have been fighting for a lot of these ATIPs for so long. We have sent letters to the commissioner on five separate occasions complaining about the government's dragging its feet on releasing these ATIPs. It scares me to the bone to think that this legislation will give the government the opportunity to push away any ATIP it wishes by declaring it to be in bad faith or vexatious.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to know if my colleague who just spoke to Bill C-58 thinks that this Liberal bill lacks substance, much like the image the government has been promoting for the past two years.

It feels like the next Liberal speaker will use the phrase “a step in the right direction”. The thing is, a step does not get us very far. At best it transfers our weight from one leg to the other, but it does not move us forward.

Does my colleague truly believe that in committee the Liberal government will be open enough to accept the substantive amendments that will allow us to take several steps forward, considering that we are 35 years behind?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would hope that when the bill gets to committee it will be treated with the respect and urgency it deserves. However, I am concerned that, apart from being massively afflicted with “whataboutism”, when the Liberals read through the 48 pages or 50 pages of legislation and it gets ripped apart, they will just say, yes, we know this and that is wrong, as is their habit. However, can they not at least give us this bit and say that it is right? That is what I have heard. I listened to the debate on Friday and all day today. All we have heard from the Liberals is that they know it is bad, that it is horrible, and that they recognize that. Unfortunately, that does not give me a lot of confidence that they understand or are listening to the well-thought-out concerns that the opposition, the Canadian public, and experts have about this poorly thought out bill.

[Bob Benzen, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-58, which seeks to address the important issue of transparency in government and Canadians' access to information.

Improving transparency for Canadians in their dealings with their government in and of itself seems a worthwhile pursuit. In fact, making government more accountable to the people it serves is a foundational pillar of our Conservative Party. In addition, it is something in which I personally and strongly believe.

It is important to all Canadians that there be better sharing of and access to information that makes the basis for the policies that impact them. It allows citizens to knowledgeably engage their government either in support of or opposition to a particular issue in question. Government and its bureaucracies have an unfortunate tendency toward secrecy and concealment. This institutional instinct toward a jealous defence of what they wrongly perceive as their turf rather than information that is for the good governance of Canadians is contrary to the spirit of the modern era.

The spirit of this age is one that values improved openness and access to information. That trend toward transparency is the natural reflection of what rapid advances in technology have made our new reality. The reality and expectation of today is that communications and knowledge is available instantly and in real time. In light of this, we know government has not kept pace with the changing needs of the citizens it serves, especially in regard to access to information.

The Information Commission of Canada said as much when, in March 2015, she presented a special report to Parliament on the very subject. In that report, the commissioner indicated that:

Over the Act’s three decades of existence, technology, the administration of government and Canadian society have been transformed in many regards. And yet, despite these changes, the Act remains largely in its original form.

She followed with recommendations, 85 of them in fact, to modernize the Access to Information Act. Consultations were held afterwards in the summer of 2016 regarding reform of the access to information regime, and a report in June of the same year by the Standing Committee on Access to Information resulted in 32 recommendations.

Therefore, on the surface at least, we can see some requirement to amend the Access to Information Act, which Bill C-58 purports to do, as well as amending the Privacy Act. We see some interesting aspects in a bill for Canadians seeking to bring documents under the control of federal institutions out into the light.

Not to oversimplify the contents of the 100 pages of the bill, but among the more relevant observations to be made are: first, the information and privacy commissioners would have some of their powers clarified around the examination of documents containing information that is sensitive; second, a system of proactive publication of some information would be made; and third, the information commissioner would have the ability to make orders that would force the communications and documents of federal institutions into the open. All of this sounds at first listen like a step forward. Certainly, the government promotes the amendments in such a manner, given some of the wording. For example, the proposed section 2 amendment outlining the purpose of the Information Act reads:

to enhance the accountability and transparency of federal institutions in order to promote an open and democratic society and to enable public debate on the conduct of those institutions.

This is pretty forward language. It certainly sets a positive tone, and from the outset portrays the intent of the bill as very progressive. The word in play is “progressive”. Is it not the word the government likes to claim for all of its actions? Is it not the same word the Liberals employed in trying to justify upsetting our long-established tax code in order to make a harmful and costly intrusion into the wallets and affairs of small business owners and job creators in Canada? However, I digress.

Returning specifically to the content of Bill C-58, it is difficult to imagine how an advocate of institutional transparency would stumble over the objective presented here. There is the rub.

There is a problem with the Liberals' progressive street cred in relation to the bill, and it is a glaring problem.

The reform to the Access to Information Act does not include the Liberals' campaign promise to extend the act to ministers' offices and to the Prime Minister's Office. Even stakeholders who have welcomed some of the provisions of the act that mandate proactive publication of certain information and the power of the commissioner to order publication also seldom fail to note how the Liberals have sidestepped their election vow to make changes to the access to information of the ministers' offices and the PMO.

In addition, the proposed amendments in the bill permit the government to refuse access to information if the request is deemed a misuse of the right to request the information. That is a highly subjective standard. It allows government officials, who may have a vested interest in keeping certain information under wraps, to refuse access requests if they consider them vexatious or made in bad faith. What bureaucrat anywhere on Earth would not consider a request aimed at uncovering his or her mistakes or misdeeds as personally vexatious?

The executive director of the Evidence For Democracy group argued that the subjective power to reject requests on undefined basis “jeopardizes the transparency and openness of government”. I tend to agree with that. The loopholes in the bill quickly become evident.

The co-founder of the Democracy Watch group expressed it in this way: that public servants should not have this authority because they will likely use it as a new loophole to deny the public the information it is allowed to know.

The Democracy Watch group is also apparently well aware of the institutional secrecy of governments and bureaucracy I referred to earlier. Defenders of transparency seek a government that is open by default, not by special request and certainly not one with the ability to choose which request to honour based on biased criteria.

The Liberals' flaunted claims of being progressive in offering new openness and transparency through the provisions of the bill simply do not survive the light of day. In one fell swoop, in a document that purports to reform access to information, the Liberals have instead chosen not to honour another election promise, chosen to be unaccountable in selecting what information to publish, and are giving themselves power to refuse requests.

The Liberals' amendments to the Access to Information Act require some amending. The bill should reflect the spirit of the principle of the act, which is, as its name suggests but which the Liberals obviously fail to grasp, access to information, not restrictions to information. It seems a simple concept, and I am surprised the Liberals have failed to grasp it. Although, as I watch the debacle of the small business tax hikes unfold and observe what the Liberals consider to be the wealthiest Canadians, perhaps their lack of comprehension should not surprise me that much.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I disagree with the member's final assessment. The legislation ultimately would ensure there would be more transparency and accountability. The commitments that were given by the Prime Minister are being maintained with respect to the legislation. We talked about proactive disclosure prior to the election. This would enhance proactive disclosure. More power and authority would be given to the commissioner to order the release of information. If the Conservatives were fair in their comments, they would realize that this is good legislation. We look forward to it going to committee.

Does the member see any good within the legislation? I see a lot of good, but I do not hear too much from members across the way. It does not mean they have to just give compliments to the government, but let us recognize that there are many aspects to this, given it has been over 30 years since we have seen improvements to the legislation. We are finally getting it today.

[Bob Benzen, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member is right, that this is a tiny step forward, and that is good. We need a lot of steps forward. We need to move into the 21st century. This is 34 years old. At that time, everything was on paper. Now we live in a world that is full of technology and the government should be using the technology of the 21st century so we can access information very quickly. There should not be long delays.

In this age of digital technology and when we have big databases, artificial intelligence, and the ability to do all kinds of searches, we should be able to have all the government's information in a digital database so we can ask a question, which should be answered in literally one day, and that information can be given out to the public. Long delays should not happen. Costs should be brought down because with that kind of technology, we can eliminate all the hours involved by people who do this. These can be brought down sooner.

Although this is a good step forward, there is much more to be done. A lot of information is still in the shadows. That information will be in the Prime Minister's Office and in the ministers' offices. If we are to keep that in the dark, then the bill does not go far enough and it breaks one of the Liberals' promises, which was to make that information available.

I will give credit for a baby step forward, but we can take a lot bigger steps. The steps the Liberals take today will not only be for the current government, but it will be for every government that follows, and that is important. The Liberals should grab this now when they have the opportunity and make big changes because they will be important for all Canadians to have trust in us. All of this information will be open to them. We should not have anything to hold back.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first, I want to pay my respect to my colleague from Calgary Heritage for his first speech in the House. He has asked many questions before, but it is his first speech.

In office, it is very difficult to draw the line between what is important for the public to know and the discretion that the cabinet should have to make good decisions, frank discussions, and to have openness to the people. We have talked about that. As far as my colleague is concerned, is the bill going too far in the disclosure of information to people in regard to the confidentiality of the cabinet discussion?

[Bob Benzen, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there are times where there is obviously very sensitive discussions that all governments have to face, whether dealing with foreign countries, or budget decisions, and so on. There is a line to be drawn and a certain period of time that things can not be out in the open. We have to be careful about that.

At the same time, what can be allowed has to be very carefully defined. We cannot have ministers saying that they do not want something released because it is a frivolous request. How do we define this so it is very clear what can be released. We need a better definition of what vexatious is, for example, so people cannot easily deny information. There should be fine line and some documents should remain undisclosed for the time being, but probably many more documents should be released for the public to see.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak here today, so that I may contribute to the debate on Bill C-58.

Throughout the day today, I have heard my colleagues say over and over again that this is just one more broken promise from this government. Well, unfortunately, I have to say that I agree with them, because this bill does indeed represent yet another broken Liberal promise.

One could also say that this bill reflects Canadians' interests in decisions made by their elected representatives and government decision-makers, and that is only natural. Access to information arrived quite late in Canada, in the 1980s. If my memory serves correctly, the first country that granted access to information was Norway, at the end of the 19th century. We did so nearly a century later.

Access to information is very important in terms of the obligation of a country's elected officials and decision-makers to be accountable. It allows Canadians to keep an eye on what is happening with respect to decision making between elections so they can gain a better understanding of what is going on in their country. Furthermore, as several people have suggested here today, this is a very sensitive issue, because we need to find the right balance in such a bill, which seeks to amend the Access to Information Act.

I was in the army for a few years, and so I know how crucial information is. Having the necessary information is essential to reaching military objectives. In every sector, information is one of the keys to success. For 35 years, the Access to Information Act has obviously been very important, as it has increased accountability and allowed Canadians to better understand what is happening in their country. They can also know what businesses, elected officials, public servants and employees of democratic institutions are doing, because political staffers are also subject to that act.

It is also important to the media, who have to scrutinize and analyze every political decision and news story. That political scrutiny by the media and journalists helps Canadians understand how, why and in what context decisions are made. Access to information is vital for the journalists who keep Canadians informed.

The Liberals are claiming that Bill C-58 seeks to better inform Canadians regarding the decision-making process in order to maintain their confidence in their policy-makers and democratic institutions. That is my understanding, at least.

I really liked what the member for Trois-Rivières said about this bill. It truly is yet another patent example showing how image is everything to this government. This is something that has been obvious to me for the past two years. It used to surprise me every time, but not anymore. I am very disappointed that this government's bills, actions, speeches, photos, in short, everything it does is always aimed at managing its image.

The Conservatives were often accused of having communication and image problems, but at least we were brave, we made decisions, we put everything on the table and explained ourselves. The Liberals are so obsessed with maintaining a positive image that to avoid admitting to Canadians that they are breaking one of their own promises, they would rather table a watered-down bill that is nothing more than window dressing. It is designed to make you think the Liberals are making good on their promises, but if you read between the lines, you will realize they are doing the exact opposite.

I mentioned the example of the Canada Elections Act. The Prime Minister's practice of “cash-for-access” fundraising was uncovered thanks to the work of our official opposition. A few months later, instead of doing the honourable thing and pledging to put an end this undemocratic practice, the Liberals legalized cash for access by introducing a bill that, again, is very watered down. It seems to increase accountability and transparency around fundraising, but what it actually does is legalize the cash-for-access scheme.

This bill was introduced in June, and it would amend access to information, which was first brought in back in 1983. Now, 35 years later, the Liberals want to improve and enhance it, and they want to make some changes related to new technology. These days, access to information depends heavily on the digital tools we use every day. Here on Parliament Hill, in MPs' offices, ministers' offices, and the PMO, all politicians and all of our staff have telephones that they use to exchange information on important issues and make decisions. We can see how those decisions evolve via text and email messages between the PMO and ministerial offices.

In 2015, the Liberals made some key promises, and one of those promises was to make the PMO and ministerial offices more open by default. As it turns out, those offices will be exempt from the proposed amendments in Bill C-58, which is unbelievable, because their promise is right there on page 24 of the Liberal platform. The Liberals said it was important to facilitate access to information, and that applied to the PMO and ministers' offices too.

That being said, it was important for the Liberals to put these ideas forward during the election campaign in order to please certain groups who believe that it is important to have access to all information.

The Conservatives formed a responsible government and today we remain a responsible political party. Today, we heard a number of official opposition members say that we need to be careful about who has access to information from the Prime Minister's Office and the ministers' offices simply because a delicate balance must be maintained when giving the public access to information about the executive branch's decision making.

In Canada, we want above all to maintain an environment and conditions that are conducive to productive, vigorous, and heated debate, after which a decision can ultimately be made.

Debates in the House of Commons are open, transparent, and fully accessible to the public, because we do not make the final decision here. What is more, we are opposing parties, so the public expects us to squabble and debate. However, within the ministers' offices, there is a solidarity between ministers, even if they have differing points of view because they come from different regions and represent citizens with diverse interests. There may be acrimony regarding very important debates. The ministers will have very spirited debates among themselves, but when they come out of that ministers' meeting, they must all be prepared to uphold the group decision. Such decisions may pertain to Canada's internal or external affairs, but regardless of the reason for or the type of decision taken on an issue, it may require confidentiality.

We believe that at that level it is important to maintain some confidentiality in order to conduct government business properly. That is probably exactly what Canadian officials shared with the Liberal government. That is likely why this government waited so long to introduce the bill. I imagine that after the election, they wanted to move forward with opening access to information by default, but they were advised to the contrary.

Again, I think it is regrettable that the Liberals would have us believe that that is the case, that access is open by default, and they would have us believe that they are making information more accessible to the public when that is not necessarily entirely accurate.

By acting this way, as they do on a number of files, and breaking promises, they only fuel public cynicism, unfortunately. That is something we should all want to avoid, especially when we form the government.

That is why I go door to door when I am in my riding. Throughout the last election campaign, when I would go to seniors' homes, people kept telling me, and I respect this point of view, that I was only there because of the election campaign.

I told them I was honoured to be there, to meet them, and to listen to them, and that I would keep doing that once elected to prove that I meant what I said.

There are some positive things in this bill. The government promised to do more. For example, we all received the mandate letters shortly after the ministers were appointed. I recently read the Minister of Heritage's mandate letter because of my new role as the official opposition heritage critic. I think we can all agree that these mandate letters are quite broad. In fact, the first two pages are the same for every minister.

We can have briefings with the ministers, where we get information that is accessible under access to information. That remains in place, which is good.

However, access to information on more sensitive files will always be granted at the pleasure of the Liberals. Anything that has to do with enhancing access to information is based on a single word: proactive. Ministers, senior government officials, and the Prime Minister's Office will have to decide whether they will respond to a given request for information as they come in.

A number of journalists and a group that works to enhance transparency in democracy have spoken out about the Liberals' broken promise to extend access to information to the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices.

I would like to share some of their comments with the House, because it is interesting and very telling to hear what these journalists and stakeholders think.

Katie Gibbs from Evidence for Democracy has said that by ruling out the possibility to obtain information from ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office, the government is breaking its campaign promise to establish a government open by default. This is coming from an external source; these are not our words. She added that the possibility to refuse access to information requests on an undefined basis jeopardizes the transparency and the openness of the government.

I had the opportunity to meet Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, on many occasions during the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates' study on protecting whistleblowers in the public service. He is extremely knowledgeable on the subject.

Mr. Conacher said that this bill brings some positive changes to the act by making disclosure more proactive and by giving the Information Commissioner the power to order the release of information. However, according to him, the bill does nothing to address the enormous gaps in the Access to Information Act, as the Liberals promised. He believes that more changes will be needed to have a government that is open and transparent by default. The bill even takes a step backwards by allowing government officials to deny access to information requests if they think the request is frivolous or made in bad faith; this leaves the government considerable discretion. He believes that public officials should not be given this power, and I agree with him, as they will likely use it as a new loophole to deny the public information it has a right to know.

Mr. Conacher is very well known in Canada and around the world. He participated in numerous analyses and reviews of whistleblower protection acts around the world.

No whistleblower protection in the world can be properly enforced unless it is supported by a strong access to information act.

What he wants us to understand is that despite the argument they are putting forward, the members of this government have not improved this pillar of the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act and the Access to Information Act.

Stéphane Giroux, president of the Quebec federation of professional journalists, said that journalists were most excited about the prospect of getting access to ministerial records, but it was a false alarm. It was just too good to be true.

The groups that want to change the voting system in Canada would say the same about electoral reform. Small and medium-sized businesses would say the same as well, since they believed this government when it said it would reduce their basic tax rate to 9%. That is another broken promise, because the government is actually raising the tax on passive investment income to 73% for SMEs.

I would also like to share a few comments made by journalists. Mr. Maher of iPolitics titled his article “Liberals shockingly timid on access-to-information reform”.

This journalist is quite specific. On the second page, one of the first paragraphs, he mentioned the election platform of the Liberal Party, in which it stated in black and white that it was intending to open by default, access to information to the Prime Minister's Office and cabinet ministers' offices. He stated, “if you look closely at the changes proposed to access legislation, you can’t conclude that it matches his rhetoric.” He is talking about the rhetoric from the Liberal benches.

The next paragraph states:

The proactive disclosure of some ministerial documents may be a step backward, because the decisions about what to release and what to redact will not be reviewable by the information commissioner.

“For the ministries, there’s no one to review what they choose not to disclose, and I think that goes against the principle of the statute,”...

He was quoting from Robert Marleau, who was information commissioner from 2007 to 2009. This is quite powerful. These are big people supporting the opinion of the official opposition.

Another journalist, Carl Meyer, wrote an article entitled “Trudeau Liberals place restrictions on plan to end government secrecy”.

I will end with this. It is quite obvious, from advocacy groups, journalists, and our own evaluation of the bill, that the government is again breaking its promise and not doing what it said it would do. This bill does not at all reflect advancing or increasing access to information in Canada.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I would like to quickly remind the hon. member for Beauport—Limoilou that the rules do not allow a member to use the last name of another member of the House, even if the name appears in a quote. This is a reminder for next time.

Questions and comments, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the President of the Treasury Board.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Beauport—Limoilou for his speech. He went into a lot of detail about this complex measure and shared the viewpoints of several organizations and members of the public.

We Liberals have talked about how important it is to modernize the Access to Information Act, and that is exactly what we have done. The member complained about the fact that it took us longer, but I would like to remind him that, in 10 years, the Conservative Party made no changes to the act. We initiated a study in the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. We immediately implemented an interim directive that covered three key aspects of openness and transparency. We introduced Bill C-58 to amend the Access to Information Act, and that is what we are debating now. The standing committee will be voting on these changes to the act so it can come into force in a year.

I think we did a number of things in an effort to have a more effective and relevant system that is tailored to the needs of Canadians.

I would like the hon. member to explain why the Conservative Party did nothing to advance this reform. It even promised to do so in 2006, but did nothing about it. On what moral basis does that party think it can criticize us for adopting the measures we have taken less than two years after being elected as the Liberal government?

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in 2007, we created the parliamentary budget office, which has the duty to inform Canadians and all members in this House on what is going on with the budgetary estimates and the supplementary estimates, and all the expenses and increases in the expenses. This was the first amazing step in accountability in Canada, and I am very proud of it.

As well, on December 4, 2014, Madame Legault, Information Commissioner of said, “Over the years, I have also made recommendations to the President of the Treasury Board on various ways to advance accountability and transparency. I am very pleased that most of these recommendations over the years have been implemented by the government.”

I must inform this House that in 2014, the government was Conservative.

To conclude my answer for the hon. member, this bill originated in a bill presented here a few years ago by the member for Papineau. The member for Papineau promised during the election—he was an important figure at that time and is still today—that he would increase the accountability of the Prime Minister's Office and the ministerial staff and offices in the Access to Information Act

The blunt truth today is that those promises were broken. That is what we are seeing today, and that is what Canadians must see and acknowledge. It is broken promise after broken promise, and that is the record of the current government.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and for reading the bill.

I tend to agree with him that this is just another broken promise. Unfortunately, I do not have enough time to list all the promises the Liberal government has broken in just two short years. I would be called to order and I would have no time to ask my question. My question is as follows.

Did my colleague manage to see any correlation between the dozens of recommendations by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner and the Information Commissioner, and the rag that is being passed off as a bill?

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, to be quite honest, I did not have time to do such a proactive analysis to determine whether there are any similarities between the comprehensive recommendations made by the Information Commissioner and what actually appears in the bill. I relied on serious journalistic sources and certain analyses of the bill.

What matters, however, is making sure Canadians understand that this government is obsessed with its image. Two years from now, I hope we will be in power. I think some progress has been made, as an article yesterday mentioned that, according to the latest polls, the Conservatives are ahead. I think Canadians are becoming increasingly aware of just how obsessed this government is with image and how little political courage it has. It likes to go on and on about virtue and universal love.

This government keeps saying that it is in favour of transparency and better access to information, but it is incapable of telling us the truth, namely, that it now realizes that it does not make sense to release internal cabinet deliberations to the public, because it would cause problems and could even hurt our democracy. We do need to have certain places where we can deliberate in confidence. The Liberals cannot even admit that they now realize that. They simply want to reassure their voters by telling them that they brought this legislation forward in order to fulfill a 2015 election promise. Once again, the main promises in their 2015 election platform having to do with the Access to Information Act do not appear anywhere in the bill. It is unfortunate.

I am getting pretty sick and tired of seeing the same thing every day from this government. Every time we debate a bill, it is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to listen to my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou, appropriately nicknamed “Mr. Door-to-Door” in Quebec City. We stopped counting the number of doors he has knocked on after 80,000. That is his goal, anyway. He actually was on the front page of Le Soleil on a Sunday under the headline “The 20,000-Door Man”. That is something he should be proud of.

Since the member for Beauport—Limoilou is an expert in direct interaction with constituents, could he tell us how they react when told that campaign promises made by politicians are not kept?

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, while I was out canvassing this summer, what I heard most often from people was how disheartened they were that the government was going ahead with the legalization of marijuana. Some are opposed to it on moral or political grounds, while others think that there should be more important matters for the House of Commons to discuss than legalizing a drug. There are other things for the government to work on—foreign affairs, for example, like the conflict in North Korea, the situation in Ukraine, or humanitarian crises in Africa.

People also told me that they were growing more and more embarrassed by the Prime Minister prancing around in Canada and abroad in perpetual election mode, taking selfies and trying to please everybody while showing so little political courage, as I mentioned earlier.

I think the next few years will be favourable to us, because Canadians see clearly what is unfolding in front of them. When I go knocking on doors, I can absolutely feel it.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona. Many of us want to talk about Bill C-58.

I must admit that I am happy to be back in the House because, now, there can be another side to what the government tells the public. Thanks to the magic of democracy, people always have the ability to help governments strike a balance and sometimes improve bills. However, in the case of the bill before us today, there is so much to do that I am not sure we will be able to do much at all.

I would like to begin with a quote. In 2015, the Prime Minister said, “transparent government is good government”.

It is a short sentence. The idea and the sentence are clear. A good government is a transparent government. However, after two years in office, it is obvious that the Liberal government is still struggling with the notion of transparency. Bill C-58, which we are opposing at second reading, does absolutely nothing to improve the situation, and there are many others like it.

For example, I could mention the whole process that led up to this monumental fiasco with electoral reform, which was nowhere near transparency. It would not take much to turn the Prime Minister's slogan around and say that a government that is not transparent is a bad government. We will see.

However, before I make that assertion, I will try to describe the major shortcomings of this bill and thus demonstrate how the Liberals' proposal mangles the principles of transparency and accountability.

Historically, we got off to a good start. Back in 1983, when Canada passed the Access to Information Act, we were a pioneer of transparency. Things have changed, however, and that is sadly no longer the case. According to the Centre for Law and Democracy, Canada is now 49th in the world on access to information. We went from leader of the pack to practically bringing up the rear.

Over the years, the Conservatives and Liberals have promised to be more transparent, but they have not kept that promise. Now we have before us Bill C-58 on transparency and access to information. At first, it is hard to see how such a bill could make things more confusing than they already are. Who is opposed to transparency? I know very few people who would oppose improved transparency in communication between the government and the public.

However, we once again underestimated the Liberals, who are all about appearances. I spoke about this several times both today and in the context of other bills. The Liberals are all about appearances; they are masters of empty rhetoric. If there are indeed some major changes to the Access to Information Act in the bill, most of them only make things worse.

Once again, the law does not apply equally to everyone. The Liberal government is developing quite a reputation for treating party cronies and rich folk one way and everyone else another. In 2015, the Liberals promised that access to information would apply to the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices. That is pretty straightforward. I am pretty sure everyone got exactly the same message from what was said during the last campaign: the Access to Information Act was going to apply to the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices. That is clear.

No doubt the House can guess what comes next. Ministers and the Prime Minister make decisions about measures that directly affect our constituents. It is therefore our duty to make sure that these decision makers are accountable to all.

Here is an example. My office submitted an access to information request to the Department of Finance concerning the elimination of the public transit tax credit. Our goal was simple: we wanted to know how this measure would affect Canadian families. In the answer we got, much of the information that was crucial to understanding which groups would be hurt by the government's decision to eliminate the credit was redacted.

It was covered in thick black lines and could not even be read under the light. The answers to the question of whether eliminating the tax credit would create more barriers for certain segments of society were blacked out. The government refuses to even reveal what advice the Minister of Finance based that decision on.

I could also reference the time I used the Access to Information Act to obtain a copy of the Credit Suisse study on the privatization of airports. Once again, the government refuses to release a study that was paid for and commissioned by the Department of Finance. Privatizing Canada's airports could threaten jobs, create new user fees, and ultimately increase the price of airline tickets for passengers. Given the many potential repercussions for workers and passengers, I find it unacceptable that the government is hiding the findings of a study paid for by the taxpayers. The Liberals also refuse to disclose how much they paid Credit Suisse for its advice on the privatization of our airports.

All this happened under the current legislation, while Bill C-58 will allow the government to make the situation even worse, if that is possible. That is one of the reasons that the Information Commissioner recommended that documents from the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices be subject to disclosure.

Many other civil society stakeholders have been highly critical of the current legislation. Mr. Holman, vice-president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, told the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics that Canada is known for coming in last place when it comes to access to information. Although we were considered forerunners 35 years ago, now we are trailing behind. Quite frankly, the current legislation reinforces a culture of secrecy. That is why the Canadian Association of Journalists recommends closing and eliminating 75 loopholes in the current legislation. What does Bill C-58 do to achieve that? It does precious little.

Federal institutions use these loopholes to redact documents before releasing them. Here is part of Mr. Holman's testimony:

Section 21 of the Access to Information Act permits the government to refuse access to any advice or recommendations developed for public officials, as well as accounts of their consultations or deliberations for a 20-year period. In addition, section 69 prohibits access to any records related to cabinet, government's principal decision-making body.

These two sections are bad for our democracy. With tongue in cheek, Democracy Watch coordinator Mr. Conacher called the existing act a “guide to keeping secrets”.

I was talking about the existing act, but I should make it clear that Bill C-58 will further complicate the access to information request process. No matter how well-intentioned the government, if access is not guaranteed, the act is pointless. Proposed section 6.1 reads as follows:

6.1 (1) The head of a government institution may, before giving a person access to a record or refusing to do so, decline to act on the person’s request if, in the opinion of the head of the institution,

(c) the request is for such a large number of records or necessitates a search through such a large number of records that acting on the request would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the government institution...

How is that for transparency?

The government sets out vague conditions and broad concepts by using a kind of language we see so often in its legislation, whether it is around the concept of decent jobs or unreasonable numbers of documents.

There are other examples, but I see that time is running out, melting away like snow in sunshine, though snow in sunshine is hard to come by these days.

In closing, I would remind the House that in 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2014, the NDP introduced private members' bills specifically to improve the Access to Information Act, bills that took into account the various recommendations made over the years by the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner.

I hope that, if it ever gets to committee, we will have a bill one day that reflects those recommendations. Time is running out. I will take the time to answer questions instead of continuing this speech.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Trois-Rivières for his speech. I have a question for him, but I want to begin by pointing out that these changes do indeed respond to the election promises and commitments made in the mandate letters of the President of the Treasury Board, the Minister of Justice, and the Minister of Democratic Institutions. We are committed to being open and transparent. These legislative measures that we are discussing today are one step among many, but it is a significant step in that direction.

For a party that talks a lot about wanting more transparency and openness, why is the NDP refusing to support this legislative measure that offers the transparency it is looking for? Why is the NDP not going to support the expanded powers for the Information and Privacy Commissioner that are included in this bill? Why is the NDP not supporting the mandatory five-year review, which is a fundamental aspect of this bill that will come into force soon, in 2018-19? Why—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order. We have time for only one answer and perhaps one more question. The hon. member for Trois-Rivières.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for her question.

I want to clarify something. My colleague is accusing the NDP of talking a lot. We certainly take every opportunity afforded to us to talk, without exception, but that is not all we do. We take action. I was saying earlier that in 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2014, we introduced meaningful bills to improve things. I admit that the two measures that she mentioned from the bill are worthwhile, but saying that, every five years, we will have an opportunity to review a bill that is not doing the job means that there is much left to be done, in my opinion. We are doing more than just talking.

I wish the Liberal government had drawn from the NDP bills that were introduced, and that it had introduced a Bill C-58 that went a lot further than the one we currently have before us. It is high time that the government did more, that it stopped focusing on its image and really put words into action.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard from many government members. They want a lot of work to be done in committee and for MPs to have the opportunity to speak and offer suggestions. However, we know that a committee has already studied the Access to Information Act and that most of the recommendations it made were not incorporated into the government's bill.

Can we trust this government? Will it take into account what the committee asks it to do when the bill is sent there?

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.

If the old adage is true that past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour, then I find it hard to see how we can trust the Liberal government when it comes to this bill.

However, the New Democratic Party has never been a democratic party. If, in committee, the Liberal Party shows an openness the likes of which we have never seen, then we will propose all the amendments we believe to be essential to bring about real change in this bill, so that we may go over it again at third reading. We are not closed to the idea.

However, under the current circumstances, we are light years away from agreeing on a bill that is all about image.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to this bill and share many of the concerns and disappointments that have been raised in the House today.

In my 40 years as an environmental lawyer working as a public advocate, working with governments, and advising other nations, I have been constant in pursuing citizens' rights to have a voice in decision-making and to ensure that those voices are informed and constructive through ready and timely access to information, and, as my colleague from Regina—Lewvan mentioned today, fighting for whistle-blower protection measures.

Time after time, when we were dealing with issues that might impact health or the environment, officials in the health department and environment department have given up their careers by stepping forward and revealing information that the government did not want to reveal.

It is disappointing that those measures have not yet come forward. I have, three times over, tabled in this place a Canadian environmental bill of rights that would have expressly guaranteed those rights, including access to environmental information. It is sad to share that the first time I tabled this bill and it actually went to committee, the majority on that committee—since only I was there, and the others were Liberals and Conservatives—struck down the simple provision in my bill calling for the government to provide access to environmental information.

Why are my bill and a strengthened Access to Information Act necessary? Among the greatest barriers Canadians face in seeking to provide a voice in decisions impacting their health and environment is a lack of access to information. They want information on the planned routes of pipelines and the locations of chemical plants before they are approved. They want information on potential or known impacts of toxins on their health and environment before they are approved for use, information on the safety of consumer products before they are made available for sale, and information on how the government intends to strengthen our environmental protections in a revised NAFTA.

Here I add that the government has circulated a call for public input on environmental impact, yet it has provided absolutely no information on what it is proposing to put in NAFTA. Talk about a vacuous call for consultation.

In successive reports by the parliamentary committee on environment and sustainable development, recommendations have been made to ensure greater public access to such information. We await actions on these recommendations by a government that claims priority for the environment and for these long-overdue reforms, and we wait for for the government to enact an environmental bill of rights.

As the Centre for Law and Democracy has stated in its comments on Bill C-58:

...the heart of a right to information system...is the right of individuals to request whatever information they want from government.

In other words, at the heart of the right of access of information is the right of Canadians to ask for the information they want, not to sit back and wait for the government to decide what information it might choose to disclose. Yes, we need both, but we need access to information and more willingness to disclose, and as my colleague has pointed out, the Liberal emphasis on proactive publication leaves government the discretion of what to disclose.

In reviewing Bill C-58, we need only consider this simple question: does it deliver on the Liberals' promise to improve access to information? Sadly, the clear answer is no, it does not.

Sadly, Bill C-58 represents yet another broken election promise, as has been said many times over in this place. The government, in presenting this bill, has blatantly disregarded the 85 recommendations for reform by the Information Commissioner and the recommendations by the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. It has ignored the advice of legal experts and access to information experts.

The bill is completely at odds with the reforms proposed by the Prime Minister in the bill he himself tabled while in opposition. It fails to deliver reforms recommended in many bills tabled by the New Democratic Party. It contradicts the directives issued by the Prime Minister to all of his ministers in the mandate letters, and we have heard this mentioned many times in this place. As the Prime Minister said in every mandate letter:

We have also committed to set a higher bar for openness and transparency in government. It is time to shine more light on government to ensure it remains focused on the people it serves. Government and its information should be open by default.

Contrary to what the President of the Treasury Board has asserted, a statement in a mandate letter does not, in fact, extend a right to information. The government expects accolades for releasing these mandate letters, then abjectly fails to deliver on them.

The President of the Treasury Board gave accolades to the government because it was elected to this open government committee, yet one remains puzzled. An analysis by a recognized group, the Centre for Law and Democracy, pointed out that there are actually international criteria for assessing how well a government is delivering on access to information. There are seven criteria, and they have done an analysis. It is important to note that right now, Canada sits at a miserable 49th position globally. By implementing the measures in the bill, it is only going to rise to the 46th position. It shoots a cannon hole in the argument of the President of the Treasury Board that the bill deserves great accolades.

Canadians remember the broken election promise to end first past the post elections, which was an action mandated to the first minister of democratic reform and broken.

On balance, Bill C-58 is a very small step forward in improving public access to information, but it delivers us many steps backwards.

What are the key reforms the commissioner, the committee, members of Parliament, and access to information experts have long called for? First is expanding the scope of the act to require access to a broader array of information. Second is reducing the wait times and fees. The government is doing that. In fact, it has done it before. It would simply put it in law. Third is substantially narrowing the exceptions and exclusions, including access to prime ministerial and ministerial information, yet the bill would cut that back with the exceptions it includes. Fourth is empowering the Information Commissioner to issue binding orders. While that power would be extended, it would be cut back by additional powers that would be given to the government to short-circuit those powers. We would have hoped for protection for whistle-blowers.

What would the bill provide? Bill C-58 would provide a five-year review. We have waited three decades for a strengthened act, and now all we get is that in five years, we can review it again. It defies credibility. I find it astounding. Of course there should be a five-year review, but we should not wait for the amendments we have waited 30 years for.

The bill would formalize free waivers. It would grant powers to the Information Commissioner, which I mentioned, but they would be restricted.

Where have the Liberals failed? Well, there is no duty to document the decision-making processes. The bill would allow the labelling of information as cabinet briefings to deny access. It introduces yet more exceptions. It fails to require a harms test, which is a specific recommendation made by the parliamentary committee. It fails to prescribe in law an explicit public interest override, a recommendation of the parliamentary committee. Indeed, it empowers the commission to order information released but undermines it with other provisions it adds.

Absent government acceptance of significant amendments to the bill, and the record has been that the Liberals have not been open to amendments from this place, and given the abject failings of Bill C-58, perhaps the next measure we can anticipate by the government to cover off another broken election promise, and sad to say we will wait and see, is yet another amendment to the ministerial mandate letters to remove the commitment to set a higher bar for openness and transparency in government.

The President of the Treasury Board has committed to be open to amendments. We are hopeful. We will have a good discourse in the committee. There have been a lot of concerns raised. We have had a lot of reviews—from the Information Commissioner, from previous reports by Parliament, and from experts. Let us hope that if the Open Government Partnership Steering Committee examines the bill in closer detail, it will speak to the Government of Canada and call for these kinds of changes to come forward to genuinely provide access to information to Canadians. If the Liberals will not listen us, perhaps they will listen to nations around the world.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have worked with the member for Edmonton Strathcona on a number of measures, including her environmental rights bill, when I was a member of the environment and sustainable development committee. I have a great deal of respect for her.

I was surprised at the exaggerations and out-and-out inaccuracies in her statement, and I will point out two of them. If we cannot rely on what my colleague is saying in those two inaccuracies, then what else is being exaggerated for political purposes in this debate? It is unfortunate, because this is a substantive bill with substantive issues, and we welcome real discussion, but exaggerated misinformation brings down the tone of the debate.

One of the member's inaccuracies was in saying that we will only be able to review the bill in five years, and that is patently not true. The legislation states clearly that the first review in the five-year rolling reviews would be one year after this legislation comes into force. We expect that to be in 2018-2019. This is all part of a pattern of reforms that we are making that we started right from the beginning by having the committee study the bill and having ministerial directives.

The second inaccuracy was that the member claimed that the bill does not meet the ministerial mandate text, but it does. The bill appropriately covers ministerial offices with the access to information regime. That is exactly what is happening.

Maintaining cabinet confidence has been recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada as an important democratic principle, and we are balancing that principle with access through a very broad proactive disclosure of the information that is most often requested through access to information.

I hope the member can tell me that she is going to work constructively toward an outcome that she can support. I would also like her to correct the record on those issues.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I too have a great deal of respect for that member. I appreciated working with her on environment committee when I was first elected. She worked very hard on that committee.

However, I am stunned. What is this, alternative facts? We have heard speaker afer speaker reiterate not even what is our opinion in this place but what legal and access to information experts are revealing. We simply need to look at what the parliamentary committee recommended, which the government has not delivered on. We simply need to look at what the Information Commissioner has recommended, which the government has not delivered on. We could shoot cannonballs through the supposedly greater access to information. I am stunned.

All the government is giving us is more opportunities to review a law that we have been waiting three decades to have revised and strengthened for the benefit of Canadians.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak to Bill C-58 in questions and comments to my hon. colleague from Edmonton Strathcona. I have been listening to the debate all day, but popping up has not yielded me the floor until this moment.

We used to say in this country that we did not exactly have freedom of information but rather freedom from information. I am afraid that Bill C-58 does let us down badly in a couple of key areas.

I wonder if my colleague has any comments on something I find particularly distressing, which is the expanding of the ability of the government institution that holds the information to make its own decision that a request is vexatious. From what I can see in the bill, it would not be subject to independent review. I wonder if she has any comments on that.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my friend, who has worked along with me for many years in fighting for access to information on behalf of Canadians, particularly in the environmental area.

I too share the hon. member's concern that the government has done completely the opposite of what the committee recommended. The committee did recommend that there should be some level of screening of requests for access to information, but that would be done by the neutral commissioner, not by the very institution from which people are seeking the information. It is absolutely stunning. People will have access to information, but the government can decide if it thinks the request is frivolous and vexatious and a waste of time.

It is frankly stunning. The bill does not deliver on what our colleagues on committee recommended.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address you today to speak to Bill C-58, an act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts. It is sponsored by the hon. President of the Treasury Board, whom we all know and enjoy listening to. It is also a very special bill by the way in which it is introduced. It seeks to amend the Access to Information Act, 1983. It is a rather old piece of legislation that deserves to be cleaned up and made more current.

The amendments were meant to affect any organization that shares information with federal government institutions, and allow anyone seeking to obtain that information to access it, according to the Liberal government's election promise. The first important observation is that this change to the Access to Information Act does not include the Liberals' electoral promise to extend the application of the legislation to the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices. I think that is the most glaring omission in this bill.

Under the new provisions of the act, the government can decline any access to information request it feels is vexatious, made in bad faith, or is an abuse of the right to make a request for access to records. If these reasons could be properly assessed, we might find that provision acceptable. However, the problem is that these reasons are subjective. It is possible that the Liberal Party, particularly when we look at how it governs, would use these reasons to prevent Canadians, the opposition parties, and groups that monitor the government to ensure it is doing its work properly from having access to all of the information.

Since it was founded, our party has been relentless in its efforts to make the government more accountable to Canadians. When our party was in office, it was not a scandal-ridden government like the previous Liberal governments and particularly the government that has been in office for the past two years. The bill provides for an increase of $5.1 billion in the budget of the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada. Is that simply to determine whether requests are vexatious or illegitimate? We are wondering why the Liberal government cannot do that work itself with all of the staff it has at its disposal, particularly since it always seems to be able to find a way to dip into people's pockets.

I would like to quote a few stakeholders, since people might say we are bound to criticize everything the government does simply because we are the official opposition. I will quote some people who are neutral and need access to information, people who are guardians of our democracy.

The first is Katie Gibbs, executive director of Evidence For Democracy. She says that the Liberal government is not keeping its election promise. She believes that by ruling out the possibility of obtaining information from ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office, the government is breaking its campaign promise to establish a government open by default. She added that the possibility to refuse access to information requests on an undefined basis jeopardizes the transparency and the openness of the government.

In addition, Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, has said that the bill does nothing to address the enormous gaps in the legislation, as the Liberals promised. He believes that more changes are needed to have a government that is transparent and open by default. He said that the bill takes a step backwards in allowing government officials to deny requests for information if they think the request is frivolous, which is entirely subjective, or made in bad faith. He believes that public officials should not be given this power, as they will likely use it as a new loophole to deny the public information it has a right to know. Yes, he called this a step backwards. This does not improve things. Theoretically, when a bill is introduced, it is usually meant to improve things and move society forward.

Stéphane Giroux, president of the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, said, “What interested us most was having access to cabinet documents. It was a false alarm; too good to be true.”

The next quote is from Robert Marleau, Canada's Information Commissioner from 2007 to 2009. This is not just anyone. We are not quoting opposition members, but rather experts in the field. He said, and I quote:

For the ministries, there’s no one to review what they choose not to disclose, and I think that goes against the principle of the statute. They’ve taken the commissioner out of the loop. If you ask for these briefing notes, and you’ve got them and they were redacted, you had someone to appeal to. So there’s no appeal. You can’t even go to a court. It’s one step forward, two steps back.

The British Columbia Freedom of Information and Privacy Association said that the bill leaves black holes in the act that will prevent certain kinds of information from being released. That is why we must strongly condemn the fact that the Prime Minister is breaking yet another election promise.

Yes, another promise has been broken. Let me review some of the other broken election promises. For those who may not have been keeping up with the news, the government promised electoral reform, but did not deliver. They changed their minds on that one. They talked about a small deficit, just $10 billion per year. That was another broken promise. These past two years, the deficit has been in excess of $25 billion.

The Liberals promised to welcome 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of 2015. They failed to do so. They talked about re-evaluating the expansion of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline project, but they did not do so. They promised to provide cost analyses for all bills, and they have not done it. They talked about lowering taxes for the middle class. We are examining the tax reform right now because the tax rate was supposed to drop from 11% to 9%. That was an election promise. Instead, the government wants to raise taxes for the middle class, businesses, and entrepreneurs across Canada. The Liberals were supposed to reduce the federal debt-to-GDP ratio by 31% in 2015-16, but they failed to do so. They wanted to immediately begin reinvesting $3 billion over the next four years to support home care, and that has not been done. That is eight broken promises, and I have not even come close to mentioning all of them. They also promised to set a cap on how much can be claimed through the stock option deduction, and they failed to do that too.

The Liberals promised not to buy F-35 fighter jets and to immediately launch an open and transparent bidding process. Once again we see the words “open” and “transparent“ getting bandied about a lot, but they do not really mean anything.

The Liberals promised veterans that they would cover the cost of four years of post-secondary education for every veteran who wanted to go back to school, but they did not do so. They talked about investing $100 million to give veterans' families better support, investing $80 million a year to create a new education benefit for veterans, and restoring lifelong pensions for soldiers wounded in action, but they did not do any of these things. I see that I am running out of time, but I still have many more examples. The Liberals have broken so many promises that I will not have time to mention them all.

The Liberals promised to invest $300 million more in the youth employment strategy in order to create 40,000 jobs, including 5,000 green jobs during each of the next three years. We know how much young people need work experience, but the Liberals did not follow through. They talked about investing $40 million annually to help employers create new internship opportunities, but that did not happen. They said they would change the Standing Orders of the House of Commons to put an end to the use of omnibus bills that prevent proper debate in the House, but that did not happen.

They promised to invest $50 million more a year in the post-secondary student support program, but that did not happen. They said they wanted to immediately eliminate the 2% funding cap for first nations programs, and Lord knows that they are constantly saying that they are working hard for first nations, but that did not happen. They promised to guarantee indigenous communities the right to veto the development of natural resources on their territory, but that did not happen. It goes on and on.

The government told us that it would introduce a bill to guarantee more transparency. We are currently seeing the opposite. It is nothing new. As the experts I cited said, we are taking one step forward and two steps back.

Despite their virtuous election promises, the Liberals have failed to make the government more open and transparent. A government that chooses what information to publish and when not to be accountable to Canadians is dishonest. In fact, the Liberals are giving themselves the power to refuse to respond to requests for access to information that they find embarrassing. As a result of the Liberals' proposed changes, Canadians will have access to less information. The Liberals are doing nothing to correct the delays that have become irresponsible.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I also thank my Conservative colleague for his speech.

It is important that our access to information system work well for Canadians. At present, there are no limits to the number of requests an individual can file or regarding the scope of the request.

A number of members have taken aim at that aspect of Bill C-58, including my colleague, and I have a question for him.

Our system is currently being delayed by frivolous and sometimes vexatious requests. With this bill, we want to change that, because it is unfair to Canadians who file legitimate access to information requests.

Is the member aware that several provinces and territories have a different version of the legislation we are proposing to protect the effectiveness of their respective access to information systems, and that that is also the case for Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom?

I heard several concerns regarding our decision, but I have to ask the following question: do we not have a duty to make the system more effective for Canadians who submit requests in good faith, and to reject those that are not in good faith and are frivolous and vexatious?

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her very relevant question. My answer is that, regardless of what the other provinces or other countries are doing, I think that we should always be comparing ourselves to the best.

The best way to prevent subjectivity in the decision of whether to accept or reject a request is for the government to realize that it is a bad idea to say that it can no longer make the information available based on the excuse that some people will abuse the system.

People are getting cynical. They have the impression that they do not have access to the information they need to make an informed decision about what their governments are doing. Scientists and researchers who want to do a decent job of auditing and monitoring parliamentarians are unable to do so. They do not have access to the information they need because the system is too cumbersome.

The government should make all the records available and make a list of them so that people who want access to some type of information or another can get it.

Today, in 2017, the technology is there. New start-ups run by bright people are popping up all across the country. They could easily set up a system with a list of all of the available records. Canadians, researchers, and oversight bodies would be free to choose what they want and would have access to the actual information from the get-go.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, given the Harper government's record, the member's new commitment to transparency and access to information is refreshing. I am interested in the member's thoughts on the major loophole that remains in Bill C-58. I would like his comments on the failure of the Liberals to keep their campaign promise to include the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices in being subject to access to information requests.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

The hon. member for Richmond—Arthabaska has 45 seconds or less.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I can answer that in five seconds.

My colleague is absolutely right: that is a major loophole. That is the biggest flaw in this bill, and as I see it, if we do not have access to information from ministers' offices, which is to say from the government itself, then all of this work, the Liberal government's attempt to introduce a supposedly more transparent bill, is a total write-off.

That is why we have to oppose the bill, and I hope people will have transparent access to that information so they can see what the government's real intention was.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House to oppose Bill C-58. That is about as clear and transparent as it gets.

This is about yet another broken Liberal promise. My colleague just listed off at least 20 broken Liberal promises. The Liberals made promises during the campaign. In fact, when he was just an MP, the Prime Minister himself introduced a bill promising openness and transparency, but we see none of that in this bill. It seems to me that our friends in power have developed a nasty habit of breaking their promises, and Canadians are clearly getting sick of it. This is not the first time, and it will probably not be the last.

I get the feeling that the sunny ways are about to be gone.

One of those election promises was electoral reform. That was no minor Liberal promise; it was extremely important. However, when the committee finished its work and tabled its report, the Liberals realized that Canadians clearly saw through their charade. In other words, the Liberals' real objective was to bring in a preferential ballot system, which would put them at an advantage. In the end, given that the committee report did not support the Liberals' position, they decided to abandon that promise. When you abandon a promise as important as electoral reform, how Canadians vote for their elected officials, basically you are telling them that they cannot be trusted. That is what we heard from Canadians.

The government struck an independent committee, but it had to be changed because initially, it had a Liberal majority. Pressure from the four opposition parties, including the Green Party, made a difference. From that moment on, the Liberals dropped the whole thing and the promise changed. In the case of Bill C-58, once again, the Liberals are reneging on an election promise and doing the opposite now that they are in power.

Earlier, my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable and I counted the broken Liberal promises. We got to 20 broken promises, but there are more yet. By breaking all these promises, the government is sending a message to Canadians that fuels cynicism. During the election campaign, the Liberals promised they would inform people better and increase transparency in ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office. However, two years later, that is just another broken promise. This is unacceptable. That is why I am voting against this bill.

Over the past few weeks, a number of people have spoken out against this bill. Some organizations that were rather tough on the Conservative Party when it was in power are now being just as tough on the government in power. They are making statements worth noting. For example, when the government promises clarity and transparency, then it has to live up to that, but the Liberal Party that is in power is really not up to the task.

The Liberals said they would make all of the information exchanged within ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office accessible. What kind of information are we talking about? At what point did that information become irrelevant to the people? The moment the Liberals introduced this bill.

Let me make sure we all understand what is going on. When the government came to power, it decided to take a close look at an act that has been around since 1983 and modernize it. That is all well and good, but earlier, I heard parliamentary secretaries say that they had covered a substantial portion of it. A substantial portion of it? Why not modernize the whole thing? It looks like they have a problem with disclosing information or making any information public that could come back and bite them. That is my conclusion based on what I heard today.

I have been listening to the debate since early afternoon, and every time an MP or a parliamentary secretary talks about the bill, we get the feeling that they deliberately left out the obligation to make the information clear and transparent so they would not get trapped by the information that is circulating, especially within the Prime Minister's Office.

If the journalists who defend the democracy that these MPs serve each and every day here in the House cannot have access to the information that is relevant to Canadians, how can they do their jobs properly? It is essential that the bills we put forward not be half measures. That way, we can ensure they meet their stated objectives. The Liberals are saying very little yet again, and the answers they give are all the same.

Sadly, after promising Canadians the world in 2015, the government is keeping neither of these promises. There are organizations that act as watchdogs of Canadian democracy. Most of them are non-profit organizations and are totally independent from any government, like Democracy Watch, for example. These organizations are very critical of the work we do, and rightfully so. They spend an enormous amount of time analyzing everything we parliamentarians do on a daily basis in order to strengthen our democracy, to increase transparency and to improve communications with Canadians. They were very outspoken, to put it mildly, about the current government. They said that the bill represents not one step forward, but two steps back.

A sentence like that says a lot about the relevance of the bill and how it was designed and drafted. I can imagine being the Prime Minister, who in 2015 promised to be open and transparent and to allow all Canadians to see everything that happens in the ministers' offices and in his own office. Once in his office, however, he realized that not everything that happens in ministers' offices, and especially the Prime Minister's Office, can be disclosed to the public.

What information does he not want to make public? That is a very relevant question, and one that we should put to the Prime Minister. We will be sure to do so. A government does not introduce legislation for no reason. A government introduces legislation because it really wants to keep a promise. I say again, 20 promises have been broken so far; my colleague listed them earlier. Bill C-58 is definitely not the first broken promise, and it will not be the last.

[Denis Paradis, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by commending the member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup on his spirited remarks, as well as the member for Richmond—Arthabaska, who spoke before him.

First, I would like to say that our government is all about transparency and consultation. Just look at all of the consultations that this government has held compared to the Harper government. My colleagues were not part of that team, but one need look no further than the consultations that are being done now.

For example, when it comes to filling job openings in the government, there is a consultation process conducted by independent groups, and people have to apply. That is not how things were done before.

It is also important to look at what has happened in the Senate. All of the rules have changed. People have to apply for a seat in the Senate, and the files are analyzed. That is a major change, as far as transparency and consultations are concerned.

I think we are certainly on the right track, and I would like to hear my colleague's comments about this right track to transparency that we are currently on .

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for my colleague from Brome—Missisquoi, but he just left himself wide open.

We are talking about openness and transparency. My colleague is the chair of the Standing Committee on Official Languages. Last spring, we witnessed the worst possible debacle around the appointment of a commissioner of official languages. There was no openness or transparency. Everything was done in secret. We found out from journalists who had conducted investigations that the candidate, Ms. Meilleur, had donated $5,000 to the Liberal Party. That is a prime example of what this government did not do and what it should do with regard to openness and transparency.

I thank the member for Brome—Missisquoi for making my job so enjoyable.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Ladysmith mayor would be very happy to hear his municipality named first. We will work on that.

The terrible record of the Conservative government on transparency and access to information notwithstanding, I imagine that the member would share the New Democrats' deep concern that although the Liberal government is wrapping itself in a cloak of transparency and openness, in fact, the Prime Minister's Office and ministerial offices will not subject to access to information in Bill C-58.

I would like the member's comments on that and whether he shares my concern.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.

Today's debate is not about the appropriateness of the measures we have taken in the past, but rather about the appropriateness of the ones the government has included in the bill before us. When a government makes a promise, it must keep it. It is not rocket science. It must keep its promises. The government promised that ministers' offices and the PMO would be open and transparent, that that would be in the bill. Well, it is not in the bill. Promises made should be kept. It is not rocket science.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, the member spoke of cynicism; I was struck by his choice of word.

The Conservatives knowingly restricted access to information when they were in power. The Information Commissioner conducted an investigation and concluded that political aides blocked or delayed requests without authorization.

Will the hon. member admit that the former Conservative government was not interested in transparency regarding access to information?

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, speaking of transparency and openness, the Prime Minister, when he was only the member for Papineau, promised that ministers' offices and the PMO would be open and transparent and that the bill would provide for access to information. That is not the case. It is really quite simple: the Liberals did not keep their promise.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am quite pleased to have the opportunity to put some remarks on the record.

When I first came to Parliament, I was made a member of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, and had the privilege of participating in the study and the preparation of what ended up being a unanimous report by the committee on what was required in order to bring Canada's access to information laws up to speed. That legislation originally was introduced and passed in 1983, the year before I was born. In my entire lifetime that law has not been changed. It seemed to me to be a pretty good idea.

A lot of things have happened in the 30-plus years since I have been on the planet, particularly electronically, things such as the Internet. We have not had a change in the access to information laws in Canada. People are chuckling and they should be. It is ridiculous to think that Canada's access to information laws, through successive Liberal and Conservative governments, were not changed to reflect the advent of the Internet. The Internet has obviously had a dramatic effect on government practices and the way government goes about its business, the way citizens go about their business, and therefore the kinds of requests they make of government and the ways in which they expect that information to be delivered.

When we were undertaking that study, the President of the Treasury Board came to committee a number of times. In all of his appearances, he was quick to get to the issue of access to information, how important it was to reform those laws because they were so dated, and how committed he and his government were to changing those laws, bringing Canada up to speed. Having a state-of-the-art access to information regime was of course a platform commitment of the Liberals, Their mantra of transparency and openness is something we have heard, ad nauseam, in this place. It was the cornerstone of the Prime Minister's private member's bill in the last Parliament, where he made a number of proposals for an access to information regime that would work properly.

Expectations, rightly, were high. This has been a long time coming. The government made it a focus within its election platform document. The Prime Minister chose to highlight that issue with his own private member's bill in the last Parliament. The President of the Treasury Board came to the committee a number of times to say that the government would do this and that it would be great.

When the Liberals finally got around to tabling a document, in light of those expectation, in light of everything the parliamentary committee has heard in the course of its study, and in light of the excellent and comprehensive report the Information Commissioner delivered to Parliament in the last Parliament, it is a major disappointment. There is just no way to get around. I do not even think that is a partisan observation, although there will be members on the other side of the House who disagree.

We looked at what the experts asked for. We looked at what the information commissioner asked for. The committee studied it and unanimously came in with recommendations. For those who need a reminder, six Liberals were on that committee. This is not coming from some kind of partisan outlying realm or something where people cannot think sympathetically with respect to the government. This is a disappointment.

A lot of Canadians work with this kind of legislation every day, not just opposition politicians. They are journalists and advocates on all sorts of issues. We have heard about the environment, health, defence policy, name it. If they are working in a public policy area, the bread and butter of that, in order to do good work, is to get some insight on what the government is doing. I know from being in this place that oftentimes what cabinet ministers have to say in question period and in the House is not the place to get insight as to what government is doing. It might not even be the place to get insight generally, but I do not want to say anything unparliamentary so I will leave it with my first formulation. I have some encouragement from these benches, but I do not think I have it from the other side. Therefore, here we are, left with legislation that is a disappointment.

On top of that, in order to mask the fact that it is a real disappointment on the substantive issues, we have heard a lot about proactive disclosure. That has been the cornerstone of the very few Liberal speeches that were offered today, none of which were made by the members of the committee who issued the unanimous report on how to fix the access to information regime in Canada. No one is arguing against proactive disclosure on the part of the government. The more that the government can offer up information to citizens, particularly that which is asked for on a routine basis, and come up with ways to make information available in a timely and proactive way, that is great. The government did not need legislation to do that. As much as the minister would have liked to bring it up when he was at committee, during the committee study and committee work, and in all that we heard from the witnesses, proactive disclosure was not the focus because we were examining the legislation. The question we were asking was how the law needs to change. The law did not need to change at all in order to have more proactive disclosure from government. There was no law prohibiting proactive disclosure of any information that the government wanted to release. I have to say at the outset that this is a complete red herring.

What we also hear often from government members and cabinet ministers is how much they look forward to the bill clearing the House. It can go to committee, and all the great ideas of the MPs can be shared. However, they fail to mention that those great ideas of the MPs were shared at committee. We had a report with over 30 recommendations on how to do access to information law properly. The stunning thing was that the government picked up on only a few of those recommendations.

The idea that this would then be referred back to committee, as if that were the place where the government would hear what other MPs had to say, is laughable. It is a waste of the time for these MPs, and it feels disingenuous; I will put it that way. That work was already done. The idea of doing that work over and over again means that the work will never stop. The work that needs to be done is the work by the government to change the law and bring in an appropriate access to information regime. We are not much closer to that, even if this law gets passed. That is part of the disappointment.

I want to get into the substance of the bill, and 10 minutes is not very long when we studied the issue for months at committee. One of the committee recommendations that the government did accept has to do with conferring order-making powers to the Information Commissioner. The idea behind that was to bring in an independent oversight regime so that Canadians would have confidence that when the government ruled it was not appropriate to disclose information, someone would be looking over its shoulder to say whether it made sense or not: “That was politically motivated, maybe it was an oversight, but that is information that should be released.”

As long as the government keeps exclusions for cabinet confidences, as it has chosen to do with this proposed bill, which do not allow the Information Commissioner to check up on whether something was properly excluded, which is the case with exemptions, not to get too technical, but one could have mandatory exemptions as opposed to exclusions. That would at least allow the Information Commissioner to review these instances.

However, it did not do that. Even where the government did pursue one of the recommendations of the committee, it did not bring in the other infrastructure we require to realize the goal of that recommendation. That is, to have an instituted independent oversight over government decisions about what to release and what not to release. I would say that it has failed significantly in that regard.

I am pleased to have had the opportunity to address some of the main arguments that we have heard the Liberals making in the chamber today with respect to this bill, and to show why they are deficient in my view, as well as to speak to at least one of the substantive items within the legislation. If we had we more time, I would have been happy to provide further thoughts about the inadequacies of the legislation.

The House resumed from September 25 consideration of the motion that Bill C-58, An Act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on the amendments to the Access to Information Act and the significant reforms our government is proposing in Bill C-58.

Ours is the first government in 34 years to substantially revamp Canada's access to information system, and it is about time. Our existing access to information legislation came into force in 1983.

The word that some have used to describe this legislation is “antiquated”. It is hard to disagree with this view when we consider that in 1983 government information was mainly recorded on paper and stored in filing cabinets.

Moreover, the federal government has grown over the past 34 years, and the sheer volume of government-related information has grown right along with it. The number of requests to access that information has gone up too.

Since 1983, more than 750,000 access to information requests have been processed, and the number of requests the government receives has grown by an average of 13% annually.

The current access to information system is under considerable strain. The information age has resulted in higher expectations for access to government information. Digitization and the Internet have made information readily available and at our fingertips 24/7. Canadians now expect this level of accessibility from their government as well.

Canadians expect an open and transparent government. They expect access to government information so they can engage meaningfully in the demographic process and demand government accountability.

In the access to information, privacy and ethics committee, the one thing we heard over and over again was that the 1983 Access to Information Act regime was not built for our times and is insufficient to meet our needs. That is why we are committed to modernizing the act to make government more open and transparent. This is what we are proposing to do in Bill C-58.

First, the bill would amend the act to create a new part relating to proactive publication. This would entrench in law for this government and future governments the requirement that government organizations proactively publish a broad range of information in a timely manner and without anyone having to make an access to information request. This new part of the act would apply across more than 240 government departments, agencies, and crown corporations. For the first time, the act would also apply to the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices, senators and members of Parliament, institutions that support Parliament, administrative institutions that support the courts, and more than 1,100 judges in the superior courts. This would create an obligation to proactively publish information that is known to be of interest to Canadians. The system would be routinely reviewed so that the information that would be proactively disclosed would remain relevant and of interest to Canadians.

This information would be available to all Canadians on the government website, no ATIP request required. Our goal is to continue to expand the type of government information that can be disclosed proactively. This measure is consistent with our view that the government should be open by default.

It reflects the future of access to information in the digital age, and the future is now.

Bill C-58 would put in place a range of measures to ease the strain on the antiquated access to information regime. Specifically, we would invest in tools to make processing information requests more efficient; provide training across government to get a common and consistent interpretation and application of the new rules; allow federal institutions that have the same minister to share the request processing services, for greater efficiency; and develop a new plain-language guide that would provide requesters with clear explanations for exemptions and exclusions.

Government institutions would also have the authority to decline to act on requests that were vague or made in bad faith. We want to make sure that people are using our access to information system properly and that it is not being used to intentionally bog down the government. As an example of the type of requests we are talking about, there are some requesters who ask for millions of pages worth of documents without providing a clear reason for that request. Others submit hundreds or thousands of requests at a single time. Such requests are not in keeping with the purpose of the act, which is to give Canadians access to the information they need to participate in decisions about public policy. At the same time, Bill C-58 would amend the Access to Information Act to provide the Information Commissioner with the oversight of this new authority.

Requesters can file an appeal with the commissioner if an institution or organization refuses to process their requests. The Information Commissioner can then examine the complaint and, if it is justified, she can exercise this new power to order the release of information to resolve the matter.

At the same time, this legislation would affirm the right of Canadians to make broad and deep information requests that were consistent with the spirit of the act. The bill would also give the Information Commissioner's office more financial resources to do the job.

The Information Commissioner's power to order the release of information is an important step that will strengthen access to information in Canada. It is an innovative proposal that would change the commissioner's role from that of an ombudsperson to that of an authority with the power to order the release of government records.

Bill C-58 proposes a mandatory review of the Access to Information Act every five years so that it never again becomes outdated. The first review would begin no later than one year after this bill received royal assent.

We can never become complacent when it comes to transparency. By revitalizing access to information, our government would raise the bar once more on openness in government.

With this bill, we will be modernizing our law and the access to information system, which is outdated.

With this bill, we would modernize our antiquated access to information law and system. We would strengthen the trust between Canadians and their government, and we would reaffirm the principle of openness and transparency as a hallmark of our democratic system. I am proud, as both a parliamentarian and a member of the ethics committee, to support this legislation.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to remind the member that during the 2015 election campaign, we all heard the Liberals say that they would open up the Prime Minister's Office and the ministers' offices to public scrutiny, because many Canadians felt that the Conservative government had gone too far in closing those doors. They also promised to bring in an access to information policy that would give access to materials from those offices.

On what grounds did the Liberals decide to break that promise to include ministers and the Prime Minister in the access to information policy?

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, on the contrary, this act, which was first formulated in 1983, has not had an update in almost 34 years. This is the first time a government has had the courage to proactively disclose certain issues within the ministers' offices and the Prime Minister’s Office.

As is well known, the issue was studied at committee. This would be the first phase of the act. It would be a new regime being put in place, and we would evaluate, as time went forward, how things worked out. The first time this act would be reviewed would be one year after it received royal assent. After that it would be continually reviewed every five years. We want to make sure that what has happened over the last 34 years does not happen again. This act would be continually reviewed. It would be a living document.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Madam Speaker, I want to follow up on the question from my friend from the New Democratic Party about opening up the Prime Minister’s Office and the ministers' offices.

I sat with the hon. member on the committee, and we heard testimony after testimony that it was the right thing to do. Even in our report we included that it was the right thing to do. I would like to ask him what changed between when we presented our report and now, when the bill has come forward to the House.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member is right. We did serve on the same committee. He had a lot of wisdom and a lot of great comments. I actually miss him on the committee. I miss his wit at committee.

A lot of what we would do here is because this would be a new regime. Because this has not be done in the last 34 years, it would take time to make sure that government departments and agencies came to a position where they were proactively disclosing information in an efficient and timely manner.

As I said earlier, this act would receive its first review within one year of receiving royal assent, and every five years there would be a process for further committees to re-evaluate best practices and what is working and what is not working. If the hon. member still serves on the committee, or if he is lucky enough to serve on the committee, I look forward to listening to his comments to improve the act even further.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member why the government chose not to change a single exception to the rule. There obviously has to be a rule, as he pointed out, openness by default, the principle that Canadians expect the government to be open and transparent, to use the member's words.

If that is the case, after so many years, why has the government not changed a single exception to the rule of disclosure? There is nothing to do with the exclusion of cabinet confidences. There is nothing to do with any of the exceptions to the rule. How can he defend that?

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is very easy to defend it. This act has not had an update in almost 34 years. This is the first time a government has had the courage to proactively disclose certain things.

I appreciate the hon. member's comments, but I also want to remind him that this act could be reviewed within one year, and it could be reviewed every five years subsequent to that. This would be a living document. Future committee members would have the opportunity to look at best practices to see what was working and what was not working and to make recommendations accordingly.

We want to try to do two things. We want to proactively disclose information, but we also want to create efficiency in the system. The government would put resources there to help departments and agencies make sure that information was received in a timely manner.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Madam Speaker, as members know, it is always a pleasure for me to take part in debate here in the House.

Considering that we have little, if any, time to debate certain things that are important in our society, I am always happy to talk about them. I think it is important that I have the opportunity to share my ideas as a member of the opposition. Consider for example everything that is going on with the new legislation on taxes, on which we were never consulted and were not able to participate in discussions. I am especially pleased to talk about Bill C-58 today. I would remind the party opposite that it is always useful to listen to the opposition parties and hear what Canadians have to say about things that matter to them.

That said, today we are talking about an act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. The first thing I noticed when I read the bill is that the changes to the Access to Information Act do not make good, yet again, on the Liberals' election promise to extend the act to ministerial offices and the Prime Minister's Office. This is yet another broken election promise. We have lost count of all the Liberals' broken promises. Again, just for kicks, they introduce a bill that does not reflect their initial promise.

Under the new provision in the legislation, the government can refuse any access to information request if the government finds that the request is vexatious. The government is in the process of hand-picking what it wants to protect. The government is giving itself the right to choose what information to release and what not to release, making itself unaccountable to Canadians. Having already been in government, we know that there is a fine line. When a government wants to be ultra-transparent and says so loud and clear in front of the cameras and through selfies, but then introduces a bill enabling it to pick and choose what to talk about, then people become bitter. They are bitter that the Liberals are still trying to convince us that they are keeping their promise. Clearly they are not keeping their promises. They either backtrack or leave out key words from their election promises. People are not buying it.

When we look at the bill, we realize that the Liberals are giving themselves the power to refuse access to information requests if they are embarrassing to the government. When we talked about the Prime Minister's trip to visit the Aga Khan they may not have wanted us to do so, but that came out because someone somewhere talked. Perhaps the Liberal Party did not let it out by not releasing this information, but journalists dug it up.

However, for my part, I believe that it is a good thing that the mandate letters are made available. I admit that I like the idea. It shows people that we are able to say where we are headed and which minister does what. It makes it easier to understand the minister's or the department's role. What I personally find more problematic is when we ask for all the mandate letters, the briefing packages for new ministers, the titles and references, which is all good, the briefing notes and everything else. At some point we will no longer be able to ask for anything because the door will be shut.

We in the opposition keep asking questions in the House, but we are not getting any answers.

Imagine how far things will go if this bill is passed. We are in the House, we were democratically elected, and we ask relevant questions on behalf of our constituents. However, the members opposite are giving us only meaningless or hastily conceived answers.

When a government emphatically states that it wants to be transparent and introduces a bill like this, it needs to put words into action. Right now, we are hearing a lot of fine words, and the government has taken some action, but it goes against the Liberals' election promise. As I said a number of times, this is just another one of their broken promises.

We have been talking about Bill C-58 for several days now, and what saddens me is that it is always the same government members who rise to speak to bills. I am not the only one who is saying so. Quebeckers even have their own nickname for these members. When the government rises to defend its bills, it would be nice if more members participated in the debate, not just the same ones all the time.

On this side of the House, we have always been relentless in our efforts to make the government more accountable to Canadians. The key word here is “Canadians”. Many of the questions that our constituents are asking remain unanswered. Earlier, we requested a debate on the new tax system, but that request was refused. However, a discussion like that in the House would give us the opportunity to speak on behalf of our constituents.

I hope that the government will be a bit more transparent in that regard and that the Liberals will give us the chance to talk about the tax reform in the House. It is just as important as Bill C-58. People are writing to us about it every day, and I am sure it is the same for the Liberals. We are not the only ones getting those letters. That is impossible since they are addressed to everyone. We see all the names that are on them.

For all of these reasons, I oppose Bill C-58. It is one more broken promise in a string of Liberal promises, and it proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that despite what the Liberals say about wanting to be transparent, there will actually be less and less transparency, because the government gets to pick which subjects it wants to address and refuse those it finds embarrassing. This is an important point for me. Some information is not easy to disclose, particularly if it is security-related, but other information that is just as important deserves to be publicly released, even at the risk of embarrassing the government.

The government says it wants to be transparent, but it is arranging things so that it gets to make all the decisions, saying that it is the best, and just too bad for everyone else, because they will not get the answers they are looking for. That is a real shame.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to be back here debating this bill, and I thank the Conservative member.

However, I disagree with some of the things she was saying. I am extremely proud that our government is truly raising the bar on openness and transparency by revitalizing access to information.

By contrast, according to the Information and Privacy Commissioner, the Conservatives blocked all access to information requests to ministers' offices. Without authorization, they blocked and delayed responses prepared by public officials. After a decade of being negligent and obstructive, the party opposite is now painting itself as a champion of access to information.

Why did the Conservatives ignore this issue for 10 years?

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Madam Speaker, with all due respect to my colleague, I completely disagree with her.

We are talking of 10 years, when all of your other colleagues have said that nothing has been done for 34 years. Therefore, all parties were responsible for failing to act, since the Liberals were also in power during that time.

What we are seeing here today is that your talk of transparency is little more than smoke and mirrors, while you choose to—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I want to remind the member that she is to address her comments to the Chair and not to members or parliamentary secretaries.

The hon. member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her speech.

I appreciate the honesty of her speech on transparency, which is something that voters care about and expect. I applaud her for listening to the people who talked to her about it.

However, we must remember that in 2006, the party that she represents had also promised to improve transparency. God knows we talked about it for five years. You were not there. Of course, it is easy to say that you were not there, but what I am trying to ask you is if you—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I want to remind the member that he is to address the Chair and not the member directly.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, if the member were in government, would she be more transparent than the Conservative government we had for 10 years?

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. As an aside, I was there from 2006 to 2011, so I have been in government, and I know what transparency is all about.

We did not make promises that we could not keep. That was always one of our strengths. We said what we would do and did what we said, unlike the Liberal Party, which says a lot of things, but does none of the things it says. I was always very honoured to work for the Conservative Party and for Mr. Harper, who was its leader. Like him or not, when he promised something, he did it, whether people liked it or not.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-58 and the proposed amendments to Canada's Access to Information Act.

To begin, it is important to note that we have thoroughly consulted many individuals to get where we are today, including Canadians at large, parliamentarians, the Information Commissioner, and the Privacy Commissioner as well.

Our government is guided by the principle that government information belongs to the people. The Access to Information Act, which received royal assent in 1983, enshrined in law the fact that citizens, both as individuals and as corporations in Canada, have the right to see government information.

This is especially important, as it enables Canadians to participate meaningfully in the democratic process.

Providing access to government information makes the government more responsible, because it gives Canadians the information they need to ask informed questions. The legislative updates we are proposing reinforce this original objective and take into account Canadians' expectations with respect to technology, openness, and the availability of information in today's digital age.

The rise of the Internet since 1983 puts information at the fingertips of most Canadians. People who care about how our government provides services to Canadians are keenly seeking that information. Canadians' information expectations of their government have necessarily changed: faster, easier, better, and more open is what citizens are demanding of us.

Since the act came into effect in 1983, more than 750,000 access to information requests have been processed, and the number of requests received has grown by 13% annually. For instance, more than 65,000 requests were received in 2015-16.

Self-identification by requesters suggests that 41% of these requests came from business and 35% from the public. Members may be surprised to hear that only nine per cent of the self-identified requests for that year came from the media. Five per cent came from organizations and four per cent came from academia. The source of the remaining six per cent is unknown.

We recognize that although the access to information system is not perfect, overall, it has had a positive impact on government transparency and accountability. Nevertheless, we have an obligation to protect certain information.

This includes personal information, information about international affairs and defence, and cabinet confidences. Our democratic traditions provide for and protect a safe place for ministers to candidly debate and discuss policy choices, and will continue to do so. Unsurprisingly, the cost of administering the act has gone up, with federal institutions spending more than $64 million to cover direct costs in 2015-16 alone.

Those costs have gone up by an average of about 8% per year. Those figures do not include costs associated with the research and document review done by employees who handle the material in question. The process can take a long time. It all adds up, but living in an open and democratic society makes it worthwhile. In general, the system has served Canadians well.

However, we are committed to modernizing the act to make even more progress toward open and transparent government. In May 2016, we issued an interim directive that entrenched the principle of open by default.

That is our guiding principle for making government information available to Canadians because we want to make sure they can consult their government about policies, programs, and services.

The interim directive also eliminated all fees except the $5 filing fee and instructed officials to release information in more user-friendly formats whenever possible.

The Government of Canada would continue to collect only the small five-dollar filing fee for each access to information request and would not charge processing fees.

The amendments we are proposing in Bill C-58 will enhance Canadians' access to government information.

For example, this measure will legally require the government to proactively publish a broad range of information on a predictable schedule without the need for ATIP requests.

It would apply to more than 240 government departments, agencies, and crown corporations, departments and agencies that we all know well, as well as the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices; senators and members of Parliament; institutions that support Parliament; administrative institutions that support the courts, and over 1,100 judges of the Superior Courts. We would also be putting into law the proactive publication of travel and hospitality expenses of ministers and their staff, as well as of senior officials across government; contracts over $10,000 and all contracts for MPs and senators; grants and contributions over $25,000; mandate letters and revised mandate letters; briefing packages for new ministers and deputy ministers; lists of briefing notes for the minister or deputy minister, including the titles of these notes and their tracking numbers; and the briefing binders used for question period and parliamentary committee appearances.

Once more government information is available to the public on a predictable schedule, people will have a better understanding of how government works, they will feel prepared and empowered to participate more, and they will have greater confidence in the government.

That is why, as well as making great strides in proactive publication, we would also develop a new, plain-language guide that would provide requesters with clear explanations of exemptions and exclusions, invest in tools to make processing information requests more efficient, allow federal institutions that have the same minister to share their request-processing services for greater efficiency, and support new legislation with training across government to get common and consistent interpretation and application of the new rules. Government institutions would also be able to decline to act on overbroad, vexatious, or bad-faith requests whose intent is clearly to obstruct the system.

Along with these changes, we will continue to affirm Canadians' right to submit broad and comprehensive information requests that meet the important objective of the act, which is to increase the government's accountability in order to promote an open and democratic society and to allow public debate on the conduct of its institutions.

In addition, we are taking this a step further. The proposed amendments would change the Information Commissioner's role from that of an ombudsperson to that of an authority with the power to order the release of government records.

These are innovative improvements to our access to information regime that will build trust between citizens and their government.

The amendments also require a review of the act every five years to ensure that it never again becomes outdated.

The first review would begin no later than one year after the bill receives royal assent. In addition, government institutions would be required, through policy, to regularly review the information being requested under the act.

This measure will help expand the type of information that could become more easily available and will also inform the five-year reviews.

After 34 years, the Access to Information Act is undergoing significant revitalization. These reforms affect the whole of government, including areas never before touched by the legislation.

I am confident that by working together to strengthen access to information, we will make government more open, transparent, and accountable.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his very interesting speech and for the quality of his French. We must take note every time members rise in the House and use both official languages. We want to do so in a positive manner even though it is the day after Franco-Ontarian Day.

We must celebrate the francophonie and bilingualism 365 days a year.

The member is an experienced and senior MP. He knows very well that the bill that was introduced does not meet the expectations of the people who believed the Liberal Party two years ago. He knows very well that groups that spring up every day, those who are most vigilant about transparency and the submission of documents that shed light on the federal administration, are disappointed with the current government. We cannot help but remind members that Mr. Marleau, the former information commissioner, said that this is one step forward and two steps back and that even the Information Commissioner will have less power.

Finally, my question for the member is very clear.

Is he comfortable with the fact that he was elected in 2015 on the promise that, “We will ensure that access to information applies to the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices, as well as administrative institutions that support Parliament and the courts.”

Is he aware that this promise from page 26 of his election platform is not being honoured in the bill he is defending today?

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his leadership on the francophonie outside Quebec. As a proud Franco-Albertan, I am always happy to use French here in the House.

Contrary to what the hon. member claims, for the first time in 34 years we are going to continue making the Government of Canada more transparent.

For example, the act will now apply to the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices, including minister mandate letters, briefing books for new ministers, titles and tracking numbers for ministers' briefing notes, travel expenses, contracts over $10,000, and annual reports for all expenses.

For the first time in 34 years, this is a good start. We will continue to make the government more transparent.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have a chance to address my hon. colleague. We used to sit on the Standing Committee on Official Languages together, so we got to discuss this file many times. I would like to respond to what he just said, because he is mistaken.

The offices of the Prime Minister and his ministers are going to be subject to proactive disclosure. It is not the case that the Access to Information Act is being extended to cover those institutions, even though that was a Liberal election promise in 2015. Those were actually the words of his Prime Minister himself.

I would like the member to come clean and admit that he has not fulfilled his election promise. Sadly, this is yet another broken promise, and what he just said was not accurate. We are talking about proactive disclosure, not the Access to Information Act. It is not the same thing.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I would like to acknowledge the tremendous amount of work my hon. colleague puts into the official languages file and other files that are important to his riding.

With regard to the Access to Information Act, not only have we listened to Canadians and the experts, but we are taking action by making profound, substantial reforms to the act for the first time in 34 years. We will continue to establish a safe, healthy space for cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister's Office, where policy can be debated in complete confidence, because that is one of the cornerstones of our democracy.

The exclusions and exemptions we are proposing will help protect sensitive information, such as records related to national security, cabinet confidences, and the privacy of Canadians. That is a pillar of our democracy. This is the first major improvement to the act in 34 years. We are proud of what we are doing.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in this debate on the so-called modernization of the Access to Information Act. It is high time that this act was modernized.

I had the opportunity to serve as the chair of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics for two years, from 2012 to 2014. During that time, I learned first-hand of the major changes that need to be made to the Access to Information Act, changes that have been needed for a long time now. I had high expectations of the Liberal government's proposal to modernize this act, something that they promised to do during the election campaign.

That promise was something very different from what I was used to seeing from the Conservative government. In fact, I cannot help but be surprised every time I hear the Conservatives talk about this issue. During the three years that I worked on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, I saw how the Conservatives continually tried to block anything that affected the scope of the Access to Information Act and any attempt to review and improve it in order to bring it up to date with 21st century technologies.

Every time a witness appeared before the committee on these issues, the Conservatives, who held a majority on the committee at that time, constantly blocked any possible progress on this file, particularly when it came to broadening the scope of the law to include the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices. There was no possibility of doing that under the Conservatives. It was non-negotiable. The answer was a resounding no. Today, they are complaining and saying that the government is not going far enough on this issue. I have been rather surprised to hear the points that have been raised over the past few days during the debate on this issue.

I also want to emphasize how important I think it is that Canadian citizens have the right to access information. They must have the right to obtain as much information as possible regarding all levels of government and the decisions they make, the motives behind those decisions, as well as public policy. It goes without saying that anyone who pays taxes, and some people pay a lot, should be able to access any and all information used by our government, since it is government officials, ministers, and people in positions of authority who use public money to keep the country running.

In publicly-traded companies, shareholders demand information and financial statements that are as complete as possible in order to have the facts they need to make decisions. They have access to information because they are shareholders in those companies. The same is true of non-profit organizations that manage donor money. Obviously, those organizations must be open and transparent when they make decisions and spend donor money.

For the same reason, our governments need to be open and transparent, and provide as much information as possible to our constituents, who pay for the services provided. Therefore, it is essential that our citizens have access to this information. This allows the government to be accountable for its actions, especially when it comes to its expenses, but mainly with regard to its decisions on public policy and the reasons motivating it to choose one course of action over another. To me, this is fundamental, which is why I am very interested in this issue.

Everyone directly or indirectly connected to this had high expectations for the modernization of the Access to Information Act, given the promises of the Liberals during the election campaign. It is almost as if an elephant had given birth to a mouse, if I may use that expression. The expectations were very high, and it is pretty clear now that we are being offered next to nothing and, in some cases, it is just a smokescreen. We are led to believe that this is an improvement but, in fact, it is the status quo that prevails in many cases.

The most disappointing things have been mentioned several times. I will not dwell on them for very long. Obviously, we expected the scope of the Access to Information Act to extend to the offices of the ministers and the Prime Minister, that goes without saying. The ministers make decisions on a daily basis, and Canadians deserve to know what they are based on and what facts justify them.

There is nothing new there. There is proactive disclosure, something that can be done now. The Access to Information Act does not need to be modernized to enable proactive disclosure. It is simply a matter of releasing information.

Obviously, we welcome that and cannot complain about it. People will publish certain hospitality and travel expenses, and some notes that are drafted by government officials for ministers, but we do not essentially have the information to understand and analyze the decisions of our governments, which is highly problematic. We are not asking for access to all the cabinet discussions and to all the positions of the people around the table who arrive at a decision. Simply put, what is being requested is access to the facts, data, and figures that are used in making public policy decisions. This is therefore a great disappointment.

Also, there was no effort to limit what the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices can use as an excuse for denying access to information. Currently, if someone makes a request, the offices can simply say that it is out of the question, that no one has the right to that information, and that it is a confidential document without providing further explanation. The person has no recourse when their request is refused. We have a prime opportunity here to set limits on this exemption so that the Information Commissioner can obtain information and determine for herself whether the documents are truly confidential or whether they are documents that might be subject to the Access to Information Act. If we dropped the ball on this fundamental issue regarding the scope of the legislation, then that is really too bad, because the offices will just continue to refuse access to information requests. There is no oversight by anyone afterward to verify the right to an exemption from the request for access to the information.

I also want to mention our disappointment with what I see as a highly problematic loophole they are creating in the Access to Information Act. They are creating a loophole for departments, not just ministers' offices, but the public service. Departments will have the right not to release information if they deem a request too broad, made in bad faith, or vexatious. Nowhere are these terms defined, and I see that as a big problem.

The government says it wants to broaden the scope of the Access to Information Act to make government more open and transparent, but it is also inventing new reasons to refuse requests. This will result in long drawn-out procedures, not necessarily in the courts, but beginning with complaints to the Information Commissioner. This will not resolve the Information Commissioner's backlog. She herself has repeatedly told the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics that she is overloaded and does not have the budget to address the many complaints she receives. The government is not doing enough to address that.

The complaints are piling up on the commissioner's desk, especially those about absolutely absurd delays for certain types of information requests, which can take years to be processed. These requests are on the commissioner's desk because a complaint has been made that no good reason was given for the refusal or because the processing times are too long.

Thus, the commissioner is swamped and will have even more complaints with the new excuses being created. The commissioner will have to examine the refusal of departments to answer a question because they claim that a request is too broad. The commissioner will have to determine whether there was cause to reject the request.

In my mind, we are going backwards. Experts are saying that we are going backwards; we may be taking one step forward, but then we are taking two steps back. Thus, we are no further ahead than before the act was modernized. That is one of the major problems that I wanted to mention, in addition to the issue of the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices.

I will close on a positive note as we should give credit where credit is due. We accept the recommendation to give the commissioner the power to order.

This process can be long, time-consuming, and costly for the government and taxpayers, but once it is complete, the commissioner will at least have the right to order that certain documents be published. Unfortunately, we are not talking about cabinet documents—I mentioned my disappointment about that earlier—but at least the commissioner will have the power to issue orders, which is something that has been requested for many years. It was also one of the 32 committee recommendations and one of the 85 recommendations of the commissioner.

Members of the NDP have been fighting for this for many years, well before I held a seat on the committee. The Conservatives always refused to give the commissioner that power, so at least that is a win. The commissioner will have access to documents and be able to order that they be published if she thinks that the refusal was unfounded.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Madam Speaker, this bill will clearly ensure that over 240 government departments, the Prime Minister's Office, and parliamentary institutions will have to proactively disclose information.

I would like to ask the hon. member why he does not think this will be an improvement for Canadians who want more access to that information.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, I did not say that proactive disclosure was not an improvement. I said that we did not need the Access to Information Act to apply it.

In 2017, proactive disclosure can be done on the Internet. It is the simplest way, and it is already being done in some cases. Some departments disclose the summary of access to information requests that they have processed, so it can already be done. Parliamentarians' expenses are also subject to proactive disclosure. My colleagues know as well as I do that some information can be found on an online portal and that all Canadians can access it.

In conclusion, I did not say that this was not an improvement. I said that it was not what the Liberals promised in the election campaign. The Liberals promised to extend the scope of the Access to Information Act to the Prime Minister's Office, and yet, that is absolutely not what has been presented to us. As I said earlier, the proactive disclosure my colleague is talking about is a smokescreen.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Madam Speaker, I would ask the member to comment on a broader theme. Over and over again, members of the government side have tried to take extraordinary credit for the steps they have taken. In this case, they failed to listen to the experts who testified at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. They failed to fulfill their own campaign promise. They failed to carry out the instructions that the President of the Treasury Board received in his mandate letter.

We heard the President of the Treasury Board's speech on the bill, and he took extraordinary credit for the measures the Liberals had taken, claiming that this would make Canada a world leader in access to information. The experts have broadly panned the bill as a half measure and a broken promise.

Would the member comment on the difference between the Liberals saying that they are going to be open and transparent and actually fulfilling those promises?

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. If I remember correctly, he was on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

I used a metaphor earlier involving an elephant giving birth to a mouse. The elephant was pregnant: the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics had made 32 recommendations, the Information Commissioner had repeated her 85 recommendations many times, and then there was the mandate letter of the President of the Treasury Board. All of that seemed to indicate that we were going to have a perfectly healthy baby elephant. Unfortunately, what emerged was a sickly little mouse. Everyone was disappointed, obviously.

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

Madam Speaker, is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-58, the long-awaited amendments to the Access to Information and the Privacy Act.

As we have heard from many Liberal members, this is the first time the act has been substantially amended since its initial debut. As has been said by many of us in the environmental law community, Canada does not so much have freedom of information legislation as it has freedom from information legislation.

We had hoped for far more openness, given the promise that was in the Liberal platform. I will just repeat it as a way of context-setting for my presentation:

We will ensure that Access to Information applies to the Prime Minister’s and Ministers’ Offices, as well as administrative institutions that support Parliament and the courts.

To give Liberals their due, let me cover some of the things that I think represent improvements in openness under the new government, and then focus more substantively on the failures and gaps in this legislation.

We do have, on the Treasury Board website, the heralding of access to information that is open by default. I think that is a stretch, but it certainly is a positive step. I want to emphasize that.

This Prime Minister is the first that I know of in our history to have made the mandate letters to ministers public letters. That has already had an impact on other governments. When Premier John Horgan became premier in my home province of British Columbia recently and formed his cabinet, the mandate letters became public. I think that is the first time that has happened at a provincial level, but once it happens federally and once the Prime Minister does it, it was “Where are the mandate letters?”

I am pleased to see in this legislation that mandate letters of a Prime Minister to members of his or her cabinet will, going forward, be legislated requirements for openness. That is a very good thing. It is a good thing to know that briefing packages of ministers will be proactively revealed, that question period binders will be made public, as well as hospitality expenses, contracts over $10,000, and so on. Those will be proactively disclosed, including expenses from ministers' offices and senators.

There will be a lot more transparency around things that I am going to describe as routine, expenses that are predictable, contracts that are large, and briefing documents that are predictable. It is also important to note that this will apply to other agencies and institutions within the Government of Canada.

Unfortunately, this is not what was promised. What was promised was that access to information legislation would apply to a Prime Minister's Office and to a ministerial office so that, for instance, when an issue arose, a member of the public or the media could ask how that happened and do an access request. That will not be permitted under this legislation. We will not see the opportunity that we thought was going to transpire in this legislation.

Certainly lots of knowledgeable members of what might be called the architecture of privacy and information in this country made recommendations. For instance, Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault recommended that it be up to access to information officials and officers to determine whether emails and memos in and out of the PMO or a minister's office were political or parliamentary in nature, in which case it would be recommended they remain confidential, or would pertain to running a department, in which case they would be accessible through access to information. That recommendation has not made it into this legislation. Perhaps the Liberals are open to seeing amendments to Bill C-58 that would allow the legislation to meet the earlier promise.

I am going to quote from an article by Stephen Maher at iPolitics. He is certainly one of Canada's leading investigative journalists. He certainly has a lot of experience with access to information. He used it very effectively to investigate the robocall scandal, among other things. What he wrote was:

The proactive disclosure of some ministerial documents may be a step backward, because the decisions about what to release and what to redact will not be reviewable by the information commissioner.

In a sense, what looks like a step forward is actually a step backward. Was it an unintentional step backward? We will have to find out at committee how open the Liberals are to amendments on this bill.

One of the things I found very concerning is found at proposed section 6.1, which is that the head of a government institution can, on his or her own initiative, decide to ignore an access to information request for a number of reasons.

Many of those reasons are reasonable. If the request does not meet the requirements set out in the act, for instance, or if the person has already been given access to the record and may access the record by other means, or if the request is for a large number of records and necessitates such a large search that it would unreasonably interfere with the operations of government, it would be reasonable to refuse the request.

However, this one is outrageous: proposed subsection 6.1(1)(d) states that the head of a government institution may on his or her own initiative, and not reviewably, refuse to accept an access to information request if “the request is vexatious”. That is a subjective term. If an institution decides that someone's interest in, for instance, toxic chemicals in their watershed is something the department does not want to share with the public, the institution just has to say it is a vexatious request.

“Vexatious” is far too subjective and far too restrictive a term to be allowed in government legislation. It certainly is a shock to find it in legislation that is supposed to take us to the promise of open and accessible government.

In other areas, those who are knowledgeable are saying that this legislation is not as good as what other provincial governments have already accepted in terms of openness. The information commissioners in the Government of British Columbia and the Government of Alberta have more robust powers than the federal Information Commissioner will have even after this legislation is passed. That is a surprise, because from the Liberal promises during the election campaign, I would have thought that this new access to information legislation would set a new high-water mark to which other jurisdictions could aspire. Unfortunately, the government has fallen short of existing powers that provincial governments already have for their information commissioners.

I am again going to quote someone who is an expert in this area. Vincent Gogolek, who is the executive director of the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, said, “That’s what we have here in British Columbia, and responsible government hasn’t collapsed here.” The Government of British Columbia has been living with a far more robust freedom of information regime, which has not been extended into our federal law with respect to the access to information that we certainly expected to come forward from the government.

How much of this is reviewable by information commissioners? That is an important point. There have been discussions, admittedly, in committee, and recommendations were made that there needs to be some screen to deal with requests that might be seen as vexatious. However, the screen was not supposed to be a subjective unilateral decision by the head of the agency in whose control the information resides. The decision as to whether the information is releasable or not needs to reside with the Information Commissioner or members of that agency. It is up to those officials to decide whether it is vexatious or not.

That failure in this legislation is substantial. I sincerely hope that when the bill gets to committee, the Liberals will be open to amendments. If this legislation stays as it is, there is no question that it will be considered a broken promise, because as much as there have been steps toward greater openness compared to the previous administration, this legislation falls far short of the Liberals' election promises and compares unfavourably to regimes already found in other provinces.

The model here is a weak model that can be found in other provinces. We find it in Newfoundland and Labrador. We do not find it in British Columbia and Alberta. Exemptions throughout the bill are far too broad. Access to cabinet documents is certainly not something we will see. There are questions as to who would redact information and whether the redactions are acceptable. These will also fall to the agency itself and not, as I understand it, be reviewable by the Information Commissioner.

There have been a lot of concerns on the opposition benches. I wanted to give balance in my presentation today because it occurred to me that in the debate on Bill C-58, the Canadian public watching this debate might be baffled by the assertions being made by Liberal members that this legislation does apply to ministers' offices and to the PMO, while those on the opposition benches think it would not.

Proactive disclosure of some things, like briefing documents, spending, contracts, and so on, is a good thing, but here is the rub: giving that control solely to the agency itself and not allowing it to be reviewable may actually be a step backward, in that it would increase the discretion of those who control information to deny information.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands for taking the time to point out that there are a number of very important steps forward in terms of this legislation we are debating, Bill C-58. She is aware that this bill will go to a committee, where concerns she is expressing around powers of the Information Commissioner or issues around who defines vexatious applications will absolutely be discussed and ideas brought forward. Our government does have a record of entertaining and accepting amendments at committees.

I appreciate the balanced nature of her comments, but I take issue with her comments around proactive disclosure, for the reason that currently there is no requirement to proactively disclose briefing documents and the kinds of things we will be regulating here. As a result, if there was anything awkward, it could be pulled off the disclosure list. In fact, we know that the previous government exercised political interference, even with accepted applications that the department had fulfilled. It balked them.

To me, proactive disclosure means that people have to disclose those things. They can be counted on to do it, whether they are awkward or inconvenient or not. It is a big step forward.

Yes, things—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I am sorry, but there are only five minutes for questions and comments. We have to allow for other questions.

The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

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

Madam Speaker, it is encouraging to hear the parliamentary secretary say, as someone who is within the Liberal government with responsibility in this area, that there will be an openness to amendments. I certainly hope so, and I plead with the members on the other side to consider that this legislation is extremely significant.

My only comment to her direct point is that it is not mutually exclusive to have proactive disclosure of documents and to have access to information requests reviewable by an information commissioner. I am not against the proactive disclosure of this information. What is concerning is that it is the only way in which access to information will now apply to those offices. We were promised more.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague on her speech, which she delivered with her usual sincerity. It is right to treat these issues with the dignity they deserve.

However, I heard my colleague suggest that in committee, we should try to seek more control over what will or will not disclosed, so as not to leave it to the discretion of the departments and agencies.

I heard the question from the government member, but I would ask the following question. Even if we can agree that there will be some openness to amendments, what happened with the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage as it was preparing its last report, which was tabled in June, shows that the government is fully capable of rejecting useful amendments and reports out of hand and choosing to stick to the PMO's agenda.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert for his comments on my speech.

It is true that this government has a tendency to go around consulting everybody and then make a decision that runs counter to public opinion, as we saw with the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. That is also what this government did with the environmental assessment process. It held massive consultations, but now it is making bad decisions that contradict the results of those consultations.

I hope that this time, in committee, we will have a chance to make constructive amendments that will improve this legislation.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is a great pleasure to rise today to speak to this bill, a comprehensive set of amendments to the Access to Information Act.

It is always with great pleasure that I rise in the House on behalf of the constituents of Saint-Boniface—Saint-Vital to discuss important amendments to the Access to Information Act.

Bill C-58 would enact a number of the reforms called for on numerous occasions since the act first came into place some 34 years ago. I think we can all agree that the current act is out of touch with the expectations of our citizens in today's digital age. This is hardly surprising when we consider that the act has not been updated significantly since it received royal assent in 1983. That was a time when most government records were on paper. Today, the vast majority of government records are digital, and Canadians increasingly expect to be able to find information online instead of having to request it.

To appreciate the groundbreaking nature of Bill C-58's reforms, it is worth looking at recommendations that have been made over the years to improve the act. In 1987, 30 years ago, the first review of the act by a parliamentary committee identified inconsistencies in its administration across government and recommended clearer Treasury Board policy direction. The committee also made two noteworthy recommendations: first, that the act be extended to ministers' offices, administrative institutions supporting Parliament and the courts, and crown corporations; and second, that the Information Commissioner be granted order-making powers for the disclosure of records. In the end, the government adopted some administrative proposals, but neither of these two key recommendations. The bill before us today would finally put these two reforms into law, some three decades after they were first proposed.

In 1990, the Information Commissioner, academics, and parliamentarians requested additional improvements. Let me highlight two of interest. First, there was a recommendation to extend the act to all government bodies, and second was a recommendation to grant the Information Commissioner order-making powers for the disclosure of records. Neither of these recommendations was implemented. Instead, over the next decade the government made several targeted amendments to the act. For example, in 1992, it enabled requesters with sensory disabilities to obtain records in alternative formats. In 1999, the act was amended to make it a criminal offence to intentionally deny a right of access under the act by destroying, altering, hiding, or falsifying a record, or directing someone else to do so.

In 2001, it added more national security protections. Around that same time, the access to information review task force commissioned numerous research papers and consulted Canadians, civil society groups, and experts across Canada. The task force's 2002 report, “Access to information: making it work for Canadians”, made 140 recommendations for improving access to information at the federal level. These included extending the act to the House of Commons, Parliament, and the Senate; establishing broader access to government records, including those in ministers' offices and those produced for government by contractors; permitting institutions to not process frivolous and vexatious requests; granting the Information Commissioner order-making powers; providing more training and resources to federal institutions; and strengthening performance reporting. While these proposals were not acted upon at that time, I am pleased to report that the bill before us today addresses many of these important recommendations. I will highlight a few in just a moment.

Returning to the history of reform of the act, in 2006 the Federal Accountability Act expanded coverage of the Access to Information Act to officers of Parliament, crown corporations, and institutions created under federal statutes. This increased the number of institutions to which the act applied to about 240. The 2006 amendments also established a duty to assist, meaning an obligation on institutions to make every reasonable effort to assist requesters and to provide a timely and complete response to a request.

Finally, in 2009, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics undertook a review of the act. The committee consulted with civil society, media, and legal organizations, as well as provincial information and privacy commissioners. Its report made a number of suggestions, including granting the Information Commissioner the power to order institutions to search, retrieve, and reproduce records; granting the Information Commissioner a public education mandate; requiring a review of the act every five years; and extending the act to cover the general administration of Parliament and the courts. Once again, regrettably, these recommendations were not implemented at that time.

The bill before us today takes on the challenge of addressing issues that governments have been avoiding for over 30 years, and while there is legitimate debate about ensuring that we get these changes right, our government has the conviction to welcome debate and to listen.

Our bill would break new ground by giving the Information Commissioner the power to order government information to be released. That is very significant. For the first, the act would also include ministers' offices, the Prime Minister's Office, officers of Parliament, and institutions that support the courts, all through a legislated system of proactive publication.

At the same time as we are breaking new ground by providing the Information Commissioner the power to order that government information be released, and legislating a system of proactive publication across government, we are also developing a new plain-language guide that would provide requesters with clear explanations of exemptions and exclusions. We are investing in tools to make processing information requests more efficient, allowing federal institutions that have the same minister to share their request processing services for greater efficiency, and supporting the new legislation with training across government to get common and consistent application of the changes we are introducing.

Another important change would give government institutions the ability to decline to act on overly broad or bad-faith requests that simply gum up the system. This would be subject to the oversight of the Information Commissioner. If a department decides to decline to act on a request, the requester would have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner, and the commissioner could use the new order-making power to resolve the issue. Finally, Bill C-58 would entrench a requirement that the Access to Information Act be reviewed every five years.

This is the first government to bring forward legislation to enact the important improvements that have been proposed at one time or another over the last 30 years. That is because we believe that access to information is an important pillar of a democratic system of government. It allows citizens to request records about the decisions, operations, administration, and performance of government, subject, of course, to legitimate and very rare exceptions. In short, it allows Canadians to know and understand what their government is doing, and when people have timely access to relevant information, they are better able to participate in the democratic process.

I am proud to be part of a government that has the courage to act on these principles, and I encourage my hon. colleagues to join me in supporting this bill, a bill that would dramatically improve the Access to Information Act and thus strengthen our democracy.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is my turn to direct a question to my Liberal colleague sitting on this side of the House.

My question primarily has to do with the Liberal Party's new excuse about access to information. One of the last points in my colleague's speech deals with it. He mentioned a new excuse that the government can use to decline requests for information if the requests are overly broad or made in bad faith. I wonder whether my colleague could provide the House with some clarification on the issue in light of an upcoming vote on this bill at second reading.

Could my colleague clarify what the government means by “bad faith” and “overly broad”? Does he have a definition that could add to the debate? That is one of the issues with the bill right now.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Madam Speaker, clearly, access to information requests to the federal, municipal or provincial government are sometimes simply not serious. Each level of government has a right to decline them. However, the requester always has the right to appeal to the Information Commissioner. That is usual practice in access to information laws at all levels of government. It is important that requesters have a right to appeal if their requests are denied.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the many fine words by my colleague across the way.

The proposed legislation we are talking about is important because we would ultimately see more accountability and transparency as a result. As members noted, it has been more than three decades since changes were made to the existing legislation.

Could my colleague provide some additional thoughts on why it is so important and long overdue that we modernize this legislation?

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member is bang on. This act has not been significantly amended for more than 30 years. Thirty years ago governments were keeping records on paper. Thirty years ago was before the computer age. It is quite clear that although other governments have promised to make changes, none have delivered.

Among the proposed improvements to the act today, proactive disclosure would be implemented in more than 240 government departments, the Prime Minister's Office, cabinet ministers, institutions of Parliament, and the courts. It is clear in my mind that this is a significant enhancement and improvement in Canadians' access to information from the federal government.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member talked about the need to modernize the existing legislation. I wonder if he would agree with me that if the exceptions to the rule of disclosure swallow the rule of disclosure, then we ought to change those exceptions.

After 34 years of cabinet confidences being excluded entirely from the act, with many of the exceptions being very broad and never altered, would it not be timely to actually do something about those exceptions to the rule? However, instead, the current government simply added a new loophole to allow departments to refuse to process a request if they deem it to be overly broad. In other words, rather than subtracting exceptions, the Liberals added exceptions. Does that sound like a sensible reform to modernize this act?

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Madam Speaker, I have worked in municipal government for 15 years, and the reality is that some of the access to information requests we received were not reasonable. If we were to act on every single one of them, it would simply not be in the best interest of government and not be good use of time by the administrators who are doing this. That said, it is important to note that there is an appeal process to the Information Commissioner on any request that gets denied. There is an avenue of appeal. If the commissioner decides that the denial is not reasonable, then the applicant would get the information requested.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in turn to talk about this important bill that was supposed to be the centrepiece of the Liberals' election platform in 2015. Since the start of the debate, all kinds of things have been said about Bill C-58 that do not necessarily reflect reality. I feel that it would be in the interests of my Liberal colleagues to properly inform themselves about the content of the bill before them.

For example, we have just heard about the appeal process for requests for access to documents from ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office. Unfortunately, with regards to certain kinds of information, people will no longer be able to appeal to the Information Commissioner. There is a little problem there, I feel.

It has also been mentioned, on a number of occasions, that the bill would give Canadians better access to information from ministers' offices. However, the ministers retain an enormous amount of power in determining what can and cannot be disclosed. It is already a little vexatious to say that ministers' offices do not want to waste their time replying to all kinds of information requests from Canadians. It is absolutely unbelievable to hear such things in this place. We are being told that Canadians ask too many questions and so decisions have to be made as to which requests are going to be processed and which are not. That is more or less what I am hearing from my colleague, and I must say I am a little surprised.

We have to take the time to study Bill C-58 properly. At the outset, it was supposed to be key among the Liberal Party's election commitments. Let me remind them of that commitment; it appeared in the chapter entitled, “Open and Transparent Government”:

We will ensure that Access to Information applies to the Prime Minister’s and Ministers’ Offices, as well as administrative institutions that support Parliament and the courts.

It is the promise that got the Liberals elected. It is not the first time that the Liberals have done this. It is not the first time that we have been told that something is going to happen during this government's term and that promises have not been kept. This is one example.

We all remember the promise to run small $10-billion deficits, supposedly in order to invest in Canadian infrastructure and stimulate the economy. We were told that we had to take advantage of low interest rates in order to invest. Two years later, the result is that $25 billion, not $10 billion, has been invested in infrastructure. Moreover, we are still waiting for a number of infrastructure announcements because it would seem that the money ended up having gone to various government programs, instead. In other words, they have been feeding the beast rather than investing in regional infrastructure, which would have stimulated the economy.

The Liberals are just riding this wave of economic recovery that has been sweeping over North America and that started under the previous government. That government knew how to manage the public purse in a reasonable manner, and the Liberals look good today as a result. However, it will not be the case in two years, ten years, or any number of years, when our children and grandchildren will have to pay off this huge deficit that the Liberals are going to leave us with. That is another unkept promise.

In addition, the promise to cut corporate taxes had been clearly set out in the Liberal platform, but we no longer hear about it. Then, there is the promise of electoral reform, one that the Prime Minister personally committed to fulfilling. I remember attending the throne speech for the first time as an MP, over in the Senate, and hearing words written by the Prime Minister's Office saying that the election that had just taken place would be the last to use the voting system that we have always known.

When the Liberals realized that fulfilling that promise would mean shooting themselves in the foot, and that it would hurt them more than the opposition parties, they backed off. This means that the Liberals were elected under false pretences. Promises made to Canadians must be kept. That is what Canadians voted for.

Unfortunately, we have yet another example today with Bill C-58. The Liberals were elected on false promises of transparency and openness. We actually see that Bill C-58 will instead better protect information from ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office.

Let us look at a concrete example of the type of information that the government may want to protect. We now have before us, in the House, a tax reform proposal that will affect each and every Canadian, small and medium-sized business, and farmer in Canada. They will all face tax increases, because the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister, who chose to protect themselves from those changes, have not, or may not have, studied the effects of the changes on farmers and small businesses. Perhaps they did not want to.

I have no way of knowing if they considered the impact. My sense is that they did not because, logically, nobody would do things like that without taking a close look at the impact. My point is that we will never know because Bill C-58 will not make the briefing notes from ministers' offices and the PMO available to us. We will not have access to them, so we will never know what the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food said to the Minister of Finance when the latter made up his mind to propose a tax reform last June.

Was the Minister of Finance made aware of the impact of his tax reform on agriculture? Did the Minister of Finance ask his Agriculture and Agri-Food colleague how his proposed changes would affect farm families across Canada?

Unfortunately, I do not know the answer to that because I do not have access to the Minister of Finance's briefing book. If I wanted, I could try getting access to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food's briefing book. I could ask him if he was consulted and if he commented on capital gains taxation for farmers' family members or if he offered up any proposals about taxation of dividends paid to family members and passive income.

Did the Minister of Agriculture himself consult? Will his briefing book reflect that, following the process, he attempted to influence the Minister of Finance's decision by pointing out to him the repercussions that these changes would have? What did the Minister of Finance take away from the consultations that the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food may have had?

We are speaking in “maybes” and “ifs”. We are living in anticipation. For the past two weeks, all of my colleagues and I have been getting letters every day from our constituents, farmers, agricultural associations, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec. They are calling on us to ask the government why it would target them in such a way, and that is what we are doing. We have been asking the question every day for a week. We asked the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food a question in writing so that he may provide us with more information. He could decide not to give us that information under Bill C-58. That is the problem with Bill C-58.

Do the Minister of Agriculture and the Prime Minister have any reason not to provide that information? The information belongs to them, but they got elected on a promise to provide information. That is the problem. The Liberals asked Canadians to trust them and promised to give Canadians information. At the first opportunity to show Canadians that the government is open and transparent, it is being closed and opaque.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is fascinating to see how my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable, who often likes to remind us that he was not part of the previous government, manages to talk about access to information while talking about all manner of things. He did still manage to give some concrete examples of how the people we represent, including my constituents in Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot and Canadians everywhere, are directly affected by this lack of access to information, and the fact that the Liberals have clearly broken a promise.

Essentially, I am asking my colleague whether it is important to make sure our constituents understand that the openness and transparency the Liberal government is trumpeting means nothing in the absence of concrete measures, when it confuses proactive disclosure and access to information, and when it does not give sufficient resources to the information and privacy commissioner. When I talk about insufficient resources, I do not know if my colleague understands what I am talking about.

The people we represent need this information to confirm that the fair and transparent government that the Liberals keep bragging about is not just empty rhetoric.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I can tell the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot that I hear a lot of things about tax reform from constituents in her riding.

She is from an agricultural riding, and she knows very well all the impacts this reform will have on the farmers in her riding. Sadly, as it stands, Bill C-58 will not get us all the answers from the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food that would allow my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot to respond to her constituents.

That is the problem right there. They make promises, they crow, they use big words like “proactive disclosure”. That may have a nice ring to it, but “proactive” means that they can decide what information to give. When we want information, it is called vexatious. It is true that it may be vexing for a government to have to respond to opposition requests for information, but these requests for information come to us from Canadians.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Madam Speaker, I want to recognize the wonderful speech of my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable. He touched on a lot of very good points.

I want to reflect on the presentation of the member for Saint Boniface—Saint Vital. He said that the government did not want to respond to access to information requests because it was not in the government's best interests—not Canadians' best interests, but the government's best interests. That is the problem with the Liberal government. The Liberals think they are above accountability. They keep ramming things through the House. They do not want to be accountable. They do not want to be responsible for their actions. Now they are trying to push this very repressive tax attack on small businesses and farmers.

Could my colleague comment on that a little more?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Provencher explained it so well in his comment.

Indeed, it is unbelievable to say one thing and to do the complete opposite, and yet, that is exactly what my colleagues on the other side of the House have been doing since the start of the debate. They probably did not have access to the right briefing book because I think even the backbenchers on the government side do not have access to the briefing book that gives real examples of the effects of the changes proposed in Bill C-58.

Perhaps it is vexatious for cabinet members not to give information to members of the Liberal caucus.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will begin by reminding colleagues in the House and all of those watching at home that the hallmark of the Liberal government is broken promises.

To the litany of broken Liberal promises on tax cuts and government spending, electoral reform, revenue-neutral carbon pricing, indigenous matters, restoration of home mail delivery, United Nations peacekeeping, and on open and transparent government, to all of those broken promises we now add the broken Liberal promise on reform to the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act.

Bill C-58 is a hefty document. It is 53 pages of amendments to the existing act, definition sections and subsections, terminological changes, and designated duties and exceptions. The President of the Treasury Board tabled a truly weighty bundle of bureaucratese, but it is as light as a feather in terms of undelivered promised content.

To be fair—we in the official opposition do not abuse the meaning of this word, as the Liberals so blatantly do when they recite their speaking points about tax fairness—Bill C-58 does give the Information Commissioner the power to order government departments to release information, but it prevents the commissioner from looking at documents if the government claims they contain cabinet confidences. That represents, in the view of all the experts, the deepest black hole in the ATI system.

When the ethics committee completed its study of this issue last year, chaired by the Conservative member for Red Deer—Lacombe, it made a number of unanimous recommendations in line with recommendations suggested by the Information Commissioner. The ethics committee—Liberal, Conservative, and NDP members—unanimously recommended that legitimate cabinet confidence should be protected. However, at the same time the committee said that much content that is too often shielded on cabinet confidence justifications should be accessible.

Recommendation 23 says:

That the mandatory exemption for Cabinet confidences would not apply to: purely factual or background information; information in a record of decision made by Cabinet or any of its committees on an appeal under an act; where consent is obtained to disclose the information; and information in a record that has been in existence for an appropriate period of time as determined by the government and that this period of time be less than the current 20 years.

All of that advice is ignored in this Liberal bill.

Bill C-58 also falls short on another important recommendation made by the ethics committee, and that involves the matter of a general public interest override. The committee's recommendation stated:

That in the first phase of the reform of the Access to Information Act, the Act be amended to include a general public interest override, applicable to all non-mandatory exemptions, with a requirement to consider the following, non-exhaustive list of factors: Open Government objectives; environmental, health or public safety implications; whether the information reveals human rights abuses or would safeguard the right to life, liberty or security of the person.

That recommendation is also ignored by the Liberals and is not included in Bill C-58.

The Liberals are making much of proactive disclosure provisions in the Access to Information Act provisions. These provisions will require the Senate, the House of Commons, parliamentary entities, ministers' offices, including the PMO, government institutions, and institutions that support superior courts to proactively disclose specific categories of information, such as mandate letters, travel expenses, contracts, documentation on the training of new ministers—and there has perhaps been a deficit in that area with the government—development notes for question period, and boilerplate backgrounders for appearances before parliamentary committees.

That is actually misleading, the so-called opening of ministerial offices to the Access to Information Act.

We remember that the Liberal campaign promise was to ensure that access to information applies to the Prime Minister's Office and the ministers' offices as well as administrative institutions that support Parliament and its courts. The proactive disclosure provisions in Bill C-58 do not come anywhere close to fulfilling that promise.

The BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association has dismissed the so-called proactive provisions as a bizarre sleight of hand, which seems intended to give the false impression of an election promise kept. Compounding the broken promise are the conditions to refuse requests when it comes to requests for information that the Liberals themselves may rule are frivolous or vexatious. Many jurisdictions have provisions to prevent frivolous or vexatious abuses of access to information laws, but that power resides with the Information Commission, not with a minister or department that is the subject of that request.

Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch offered a measured, if critical, assessment of Bill C-58 in saying that the bill proposes good amendments, by requiring a more proactive publication of some information, by giving the Information Commissioner the power to order the publication of some information, but it “does nothing” to fill the huge gaps in the act, as promised by the Liberals.

Stéphane Giroux, president of la Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, offered the federation's assessment of Bill C-58 with droll irony. He said that the most interesting fact for them was to have access to ministers' office documents. However, he concludes it was a false alarm, too good to be true.

A former information commissioner, Robert Marleau, lamented the fact that under Bill C-58, there is no one in government departments to review what they choose not to publish. He said this is contrary to the principle of the act. It puts the commissioner completely out of the loop. If people requested briefing notes previously and parts had been blacked out, they had someone to appeal to. This would be no longer the case, and they cannot even ask in court. Monsieur Marleau concluded, “It is one step forward, two steps back”.

Members will be forgiven if they have lost track of the number of Liberal promises broken, not across the entire Liberal policy spectrum but here in Bill C-58 alone. They may have noticed recently that the Liberals are somewhat sensitive to discussion of the emptiness of their virtue signalling in policy pronouncements. I am sure that this is a phrase that was coined only in the past few years, but it could well have been custom designed for the current Liberal government. Virtue signalling has become a shorthand characterization for the spouting of superficial, platitudinous, supposedly high-minded, morally correct commitments with little intention of fulfilling or living up to these commitments. I am sure members will agree that characterization applies almost top to bottom with the Liberals' 2015 campaign promises. Much was promised, as I detailed in my opening remarks, with regard to tax cuts and government spending, electoral reform, revenue-neutral carbon pricing, indigenous matters, restoration of home mail delivery, United Nations peacekeeping, and open and transparent government; but precious little has been delivered. There have been so many promises blithely broken.

Bill C-58 is a perfect example of virtue signalling in the promises of great reform, transparency, and openness in Canadians' access to information. The reality is, as has been said so often in this debate on Bill C-58, one step forward and several steps back.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the remarks of my colleague, who was a member of the previous government. That government actually gave political instructions to ministerial staff to block or delay responses to freedom of information requests that had already been accepted and fulfilled by the access to information secretariat staff. The moral high ground he seems to be taking in his speech is a little curious, given that.

I understand that he also has some measured comments about our bill. I would like to address the comments about frivolous and vexatious applications. First, it is important that our system works for everyone. Second, requests are increasing by 13% a year. Third, there are some requests that gum up the system and are not really intended to secure information.

As the member fairly pointed out, we know that the commissioner, the committee, eight provinces, and many countries have provisions for frivolous and vexatious requests. He criticized the fact that these decisions to accept or not could be made by the government. In reality, people who have their request denied on this basis will still be able to complain to the Information Commissioner, who has order-making powers.

Does the member think it is better to not do this and have an inefficient system, or is it better to actually remove some of these requests that gum up the system?

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, two years of Liberal government should put in the past the schoolyard practices of pointing elsewhere when criticism is presented to the litany of broken promises that it is accumulating.

With regard to frivolous and vexatious questions, I agree that there is often occasion for a good number of such frivolous and vexatious requests for information. I found that in my time in government as a minister. It does represent a continuing problem. The various information authorities across the country have pointed out that in fact Bill C-58 does not have that defined right of appeal to the Information Commissioner. The appeal is not formally implanted in this legislation, and it appears that the word of the minister or the individual department will be considered as final. I am sure this will be brought up in review at the one-year point, although I hope that in committee an amendment will be made to provide for a formalized authority for appeals directly.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague referred to the bill as another example of broken Liberal promises.

Does he agree that it is also a bill that could be termed as a bill of missed opportunities? For example, in the frivolous and vexatious requests debate that just occurred, in the province of British Columbia, there is a very miniscule 1% type of number for those requests that are deemed frivolous and vexatious. Unlike in this bill, they go straight to the commissioner for a determination. Imagine letting the government decide whether it likes a particular request.

Would it not be better to have the commissioner make that decision and apply mediation to get rid of those totally illegitimate requests that so infrequently occur but still do from time to time? Would that not be an example of an opportunity missed in this bill?

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend speaks to the matters of information in Bill C-58, the considerations included and not included, with the authority of his personal history. Yes, that is exactly the suggestion that has been made, not only by my hon. friend but by experts across the country that, in fact, the appeal process should be directly to the Information Commissioner who, with the authority of the position, would make a decision one way or the other.

It is true that the statistics do not show great continuing volume of frivolous and vexatious questions. However, I can say that there are times, as in our previous government, when certain interest groups will deluge certain ministries with what can only be considered frivolous and vexatious requests.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Youth)]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the government to speak to our efforts to strengthen our access to information regime.

Our government recognizes the importance of a solid framework for access to information. We promised to provide a modern access to information regime because we are determined to preserve and strengthen the democratic principles of openness and transparency. We recognize that Canadians cannot meaningfully participate in democracy without having the information they need. In fact, we believe that the information that Canadians have paid for belongs to them. They absolutely have the right to have access to it.

Bill C-58, a detailed set of amendments to the Access to Information Act, was designed to give Canadians the openness and accountability they expect. Furthermore, it will enhance transparency, foster greater public participation in governance, and support the Government of Canada's commitment to evidence-based decision-making.

Canada's access to information legislation has not changed a great deal since 1983, but our world has changed a great deal since then. The proliferation of personal technology like smart phones has transformed many aspects of our lives. We recognize that technology in all its forms is changing how citizens interact with their government in powerful ways. This change is happening around the world and and certainly here in Canada.

Technology is empowering citizens to act on their expectations that a government be honest, open, and sincere in its efforts to serve the public interest. Canadians are demanding greater openness from their government. They are calling for greater participation in the government's decision-making process. They are seeking to make their government more transparent, more accountable, and more responsive to its citizens. That is why, in 2016, the President of the Treasury Board issued the interim directive on the administration of the Access to Information Act. Under this directive, federal employees are required to waive all access to information fees, apart from the $5 application fee.

Wherever possible, they are also required to provide the information to requesters in formats that are modern and easy to use. This directive enshrines the principle of openness by default. Make no mistake, this is a crucial measure. Being open by default means optimizing the release of government data and information. The interim directive sends a clear message to all federal institutions. Citizens should not have to explain why they need information in the government's possession. On the contrary, our government said that it intends to publish as much information as possible, subject to certain necessary restrictions that we can all understand, such as protection of personal information, confidentiality, and national security.

Here are some examples of information that will be proactively disclosed: travel and hospitality expenses for ministers and their staff, as well as senior officials across government; contracts over $10,000 and all contracts for MPs and senators; grants and contributions over $25,000; mandate letters and revised mandate letters; briefing packages for new ministers and deputy ministers; lists of briefing notes for the minister or deputy minister, including the titles of these notes and their tracking numbers; and, of course, the briefing binders used for question period.

This is fundamental not only to the ability to participate in the democratic process, but also to hold the government to account. Today, with Bill C-58, we are going further. The legislation proposes to entrench in law for current and future governments an obligation to proactively publish a broad range of information to a predictable schedule and without the need for an access to information request.

One way to ensure the continued strength of the access to information regime is to undertake a review of the Access to Information Act every five years, another important feature in Bill C-58. Legislative reviews provide an important opportunity for stakeholders to have their say on access rights, and help us ensure that the regime continues to meet their needs.

In conclusion, open and transparent government is the way forward. Canadians have waited a long time to have their access to information regime modernized to meet their needs in the digital age. I encourage my hon. colleagues to support Bill C-58, thereby giving Canadians the kind of access to information regime they expect.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, our colleague from Vaudreuil—Soulanges shared some fine principles with us.

However, I would like him to explain how these fine principles will be put into action, because I am having difficulty understanding that. Most of the 32 recommendations made by the ethics committee following its study on access to information were disregarded, as were the 85 recommendations made by the Information Commissioner, who does not have enough resources to do her job. There is no way these words can be put into action when the government is confusing proactive disclosure with true access to information.

The government has told us what information will be shared, but the problem lies with the information that will not be shared. We do not know what will constitute a frivolous request. Why would a citizen be accused of being frivolous? How can a citizen be accused of requesting something too general? How will the government determine if a citizen's request is inadmissible?

It is not clear at all. I would like the member to provide some clarification on this.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her question.

This is not just talk. In the speech I just gave, I mentioned some practical measures that will be taken to ensure that our government becomes increasingly transparent and accessible. We have been waiting for real changes like the ones set out in Bill C-58 since 1983, and I am proud to be part of a government that keeps its promises, a government that is more transparent and more accessible to people across the country.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to access to information, Canadians want to understand what the government is doing. When they have a question, they want a real answer. We have heard a lot of testimony over these last few days about requests taking months under the current system. When I have made requests, the answers I have received have been absolutely bland and have contained no information at all.

The Prime Minister promised that he would fix this and that it would include the PMO. Clearly, that promise has been broken. Could the member speak to how the government can get to a place where the answers to the questions contain real data and real answers?

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is a sincere question, and I very much appreciate all of the member's questions.

She is 100% right that the system is broken. The system is not working the way it should. I am confident in the steps we are taking right now to make the system work better, not only for members of the House but for all Canadians. Concrete measures are included in Bill C-58 that would ensure Canadians have greater access to their government and that future governments, not just the current government, are more transparent.

What is also great is that in five years, which is a component of the bill, we will see how things are going, if the changes we have put in place are having a positive impact, and if there are other ways we could perhaps make the system even better. It will be revised in five years. Hopefully we will all be here at that time to look at what has been done and see how we can make it even better. One of the positive aspects of Bill C-58 is that it would give us the capacity to do that in five years.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, members of the opposition appear to want everything that every expert and academic has suggested for our access to information regime to be in this one bill, which, for the first time in 34 years, addresses the shortcomings. Does the member view the other approach, which is a step-by-step approach our government is taking, as a better way forward?

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we have taken the appropriate steps. The methodology we have used to come to a conclusion on the proposal in Bill C-58 is the best way to move forward on this. We did it in a transparent way. We were able to talk to Canadians about this. I had discussions in my own riding about the best path forward.

This is something all Canadians can get behind. It is easy to understand. I think Canadians understand that this would allow them to have more efficient, transparent, and easily accessible contact with their government so they can better understand the actions we take as their government.

I look at this bill as one that will positively impact not just the current government but future generations of governments to come. As well, it will positively impact Canadians. They will now have a better, more transparent, and more accessible government.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in today's debate on Bill C-58.

The bill amends the 1983 Access to Information Act. Amendments to the act will affect organizations that share information with federal government institutions and people who want to access that information. It comes as no surprise that this Access to Information Act reform does not fulfill the Liberals' election promise to apply the act to ministers' offices and the PMO. That is the time-honoured Liberal way of doing things.

What is new here is that the government is implementing a proactive information disclosure regime. Under the new Access to Information Act, ministers' offices and the PMO will have to proactively publish several types of information.

Ethics and transparency matter to me, so I strongly condemn the fact that the Prime Minister is breaking yet another election promise. In fact, I find it offensive.

The Liberal government calls itself open and transparent, but it has once again missed an opportunity to prove it. It has failed to deliver the amendments it promised with respect to access to information from ministers' offices and the PMO.

Under our very eyes, the Liberals are being dishonest with Canadians and are once more seeking to make their decisions behind closed doors in order to make their friends rich and to hold on to power. This also reminds me of the marijuana legislation scandal last November when it was seriously suspected that the marijuana task force report was leaked before it was tabled. As if by chance, this benefited a company operated by the person responsible for the Liberal Party's finances. Oh, yes, that person is the co-founder of a company that produces marijuana and that saw its shares double in a week, even though the final report had not yet been released. We saw that the Minister of Justice was not too co-operative and did not want to face those facts.

Despite all their fine promises during the election campaign, the Liberals have failed to increase the government's openness and transparency. It is no exaggeration for me to add that, since the Liberals took office, even the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has had a hard time overseeing and enforcing the guidelines in the document entitled ”Open and Accountable Government”, which, let us recall, comes from the Prime Minister himself.

This government is known for not walking the talk because it unscrupulously chooses what information to publish and when not to be accountable to Canadians. Once again, it is scandalous to see that only its cronies get preferential treatment.

How can the actions of such a government be described? It is easy, in fact. It is called the art of giving itself the power to refuse to respond to access to information requests when the government considers them embarrassing or shameful.

There is something to be ashamed of when one thinks of the scandal of the Prime Minister and his family vacationing down south at the Aga Khan's home at the expense of taxpayers. We received the information in dribs and drabs and waited more than eight months before finding out how much that luxury of the Prime Minister really cost us.

It is absolutely appalling that the changes proposed by the Liberals will ensure that even less information will be available to Canadians, and that they are obviously doing nothing to address the already unacceptable delays.

Monitoring this government is becoming virtually a full-time job because ethics is a value that it undeniably lacks.

I think the Liberals like to test limits. Not only did they give themselves the power to sidestep their duty to be transparent for Canadians, we know that they like to walk a fine line between conflict of interest and the appearance of conflict of interest, which is unacceptable for our Canadian democracy.

Last December, I had to raise this issue in an adjournment debate seeking to ensure that no preferential access or appearance of preferential access would be granted to individuals or organizations that have contributed to the Liberal Party at the many events where a parade of cabinet ministers have all the time in the world for their special friends who pay for preferential access.

I would like to remind members of the injustice, unethical behaviour, and lack of transparency.

It all began with the relocation costs of two employees and friends who work in the Prime Minister's Office. Their move cost Canadian taxpayers $200,000. Then we happened to get wind of a number of cocktail parties that cost $1,500 to get into, but guests could eat canapés, drink some good wine, and while they were at it, as I just mentioned, have privileged access to ministers and friends of the party in order to talk secretly about matters and issues that have to do with the portfolios of those ministers.

We also learned about the donation from a wealthy Chinese businessman, which made Canada a place where not only are ministers for sale or rent, but so is the Prime Minister. In exchange for a huge donation, he just might be able to get a foothold in our Canadian economy in any way he chooses.

Then there is the scandal involving the Minister of Justice, who turned blue in the face denying leaks from the task force on marijuana. Not only is the Liberal government and its Prime Minister irresponsible, but they are undermining our democracy in every sense of the word.

Once more, the Prime Minister thinks he is above the law and the obligation to be transparent. In our view, the Liberals are being dishonest with Canadians and are again trying to make decisions behind closed doors to make their friends rich and hold on to power.

We see that they have always favoured those who have the means to pay for the luxury of special treatment in true Liberal style.

Since the Liberals are unlikely to vote to put an end to this ethics and transparency scandal and to have the Prime Minister and the ministers take their duties seriously and with transparency, I would like to know what the government plans to do to put an end to this old Liberal practice.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I must say, that was a rather surprising speech. The Conservative MP started by criticizing Bill C-58 in its entirety. He then talked about a number of other things that have nothing to do with today's topic. For the first time, the Access to Information Act will be extended to include the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices. This bill gives the Information Commissioner the power to order government information to be released for the first time. We are making substantive amendments that will have the combined effect of reducing delays. There are a number of initiatives in addition to the powers of the Information Commissioner.

Does the member not feel that granting powers to the Information Commissioner is an improvement to our current access to information regime?

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

The first thing that the government could do in order to provide all Canadians with better access to information would be to simply answer questions in question period. It could also give us actual figures when we ask, and actual details of what it is doing.

We are forced to make access to information requests to find out what this government has really been doing, even after asking questions. In some cases, we had to wait eight months for a reply to questions we asked in the House about amounts that even the Prime Minister and other ministers did not want to provide.

Why not simply provide the information directly to the House in question period?

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague. I heard the parliamentary secretary say, in so many words, that there is nothing to get worked up about. That is like someone wanting to sell us their house but refusing to allow an inspection and telling us there is nothing to get worked up about since we were given a tour of the bedroom. We want to see the entire house and get an inspection.

That said, I cannot help but roll my eyes when I hear the hon. member saying how dreadful this is and demanding access to all of the information.

Will my colleague at least recognize that the reason Canadians want more information on what is happening in the government stems from the fact that for 10 years they got almost nothing from the Conservatives when they were in government?

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I disagree with my colleague opposite, who has been sitting with me in the House for a few years now.

We answered questions from opposition members in the House and also talked to them outside of the House and provided them with the information they asked us for.

Here we have a culture where the government shows no sign of being transparent, and that culture undermines Canadians' trust in the government. We will certainly solve that problem in 2019.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, here we have proposed legislation that would make the first significant improvements in well over three decades. Stephen Harper, throughout his duration as prime minister, chose to ignore such legislation. Today, we have substantial changes.

Will the member across the way at least acknowledge that this is a significant step that no one can deny? Would he support the legislation's going to committee?

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would have preferred it if my colleague had talked about frivolous requests.

Who is going to determine whether a request for access to information from a Canadian citizen deserves to be processed or not? It is such a broad term that I think no Canadian will get the answer he or she deserves.

[Kim Rudd, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on behalf of the government about our efforts to strengthen our access to information system.

This government recognizes the importance of a robust access to information framework. We promised to deliver a modern and responsible access to information regime, because we are committed to upholding and strengthening the democratic principles of openness and transparency.

We recognize that Canadians cannot meaningfully participate in a democracy without having the information they need. Indeed, we believe that information Canadians paid for belongs to Canadians. They have every right to access it.

Bill C-58, a comprehensive set of amendments to the Access to Information Act, is designed to provide the openness and accountability Canadians expect. It would also bring greater transparency, open the doors for greater public participation in governance, and support the Government of Canada's commitment to evidence-based decision-making.

Canada's access to information legislation has not really changed much since 1983, but our world has changed very much since then. The proliferation of personal technology, such as smart phones, has transformed so many aspects of our lives. We recognize that technology in all forms is altering how citizens interact with their government in powerful ways. This change is happening around the world and right here at home. Technology is empowering citizens to act on their expectations that a government be honest, open, and sincere in its efforts to serve the public interest.

Canadians are demanding greater openness in government. They are calling for greater participation in government decision-making, and they are seeking to make their government more transparent, responsive, and accountable. That is why, in April 2016, the President of the Treasury Board issued an interim directive on the administration of the Access to Information Act. This directive requires federal officials to waive all access to information fees, apart from the $5 application fee. It also requires them to provide to requesters, wherever feasible, information in modern and easy-to-use formats, and it enshrines the principle of open by default. This is an important measure.

Being open by default means maximizing the release of government data and information. As such, the interim directive sends a strong message across federal institutions. It says that government information belongs to the people it serves and therefore should be open by default.

Citizens should not have to make the case for why they deserve information from the government. Instead, our government has said that it will make as much information as it can available, subject to necessary limitations, for reasons we all can understand, such as privacy, confidentiality, and national security. This is fundamental not only to the ability to participate in the democratic process but to hold the government to account.

Today, with Bill C-58, we are going further. The legislation proposes to entrench in law, for current and future governments, an obligation to proactively publish a broad range of information on a predictable schedule and without the need for an access to information request. The amendments would create a new part of the act on proactive publication, taking advantage of digital technologies and building on current best practices. This new part of the act would establish consistent requirements for the proactive release of key information across government.

Let me list a few examples: travel and hospitality expenses for ministers and their staff as well as for senior officials across government; contracts over $10,000, and all contracts for MPs and senators; grants and contributions over $25,000; mandate letters and revised mandate letters; briefing packages for new ministers and deputy ministers; lists of briefing notes for ministers and deputy ministers, including the titles of these notes and their tracking numbers; and the briefing binders used for question period and parliamentary committee appearances. This would allow our citizens a greater understanding of government and demonstrate effective stewardship of public funds.

We are doing this because we know that Canadians want us to pull back the curtain on how government spends and the factors that influence the decisions that affect their lives. Canadians expect to know how and why decisions are made on their behalf.

That is not all the bill would do. No access to information regime is complete without powerful and meaningful oversight. We promised Canadians that we would empower the Information Commissioner to order government information to be released. Bill C-58 would do just that. This bill would change the commissioner's role from that of an ombudsperson to an authority with the legislated ability to order government institutions to release records.

We also recognize that this reform cannot be a one-off initiative. We have been witness to many changes in society since the access to information program was established back in 1983. We need to find ways to ensure that the system continues to grow and change alongside us. We cannot allow our access to information practices to become stagnant. A vibrant and evolving access to information regime will support a strong, open, and transparent democracy.

One way to ensure the continued strength of the access to information regime would be to undertake a review of the Access to Information Act every five years, another important feature in Bill C-58. Legislative reviews would provide an important opportunity for stakeholders to have their say on access rights and would help us ensure that the regime continued to meet their needs.

Let there be no doubt. Open and transparent government is the way forward. If citizens understand why their government takes a particular course of action, if they have been engaged from the beginning, if they have access to the same information government has, they will have more confidence and trust in the outcomes.

Canadians have waited a long time to have their access to information regime modernized to meet their needs in the digital age. I encourage my hon. colleagues to support Bill C-58, thereby giving Canadians the kind of access to information regime they expect and deserve.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one thing the member said is that citizens would not need to make a case. Actually, they would have to make even more of a case now because of the subjectivity of this legislation. That is concerning to me. In a free and open democracy, if a citizen is to make a case and actually have results, they should get those, not just from the subjectivity of a minister or a bureaucrat randomly making a choice.

In addition, the member also stated that there needs to be powerful and meaningful oversight. Robert Marleau, the former information commissioner, said he has real concerns. As he has stated, “They've taken the commissioner out of the loop.” If someone requests briefing materials, and parts of them are blacked out, there was someone to appeal to in the past. Now this is no longer the case.

The two issues the member has brought forward to the House are actually not borne out in the legislation. Would the member like to correct the record, because obviously, this is subjective and is not meeting the needs of Canadians?

[Kim Rudd, Liberal, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right about subjectivity. The member's subjectivity is possibly clouding the overarching positive aspect of this bill, and that is the ability of Canadians to access information to which Canadians are entitled.

I will reiterate comments made earlier today about the fact that this is a big change for Canadians. Starting about 12 years ago, for a period of 10 years, Canadians waited six, seven, and eight years to actually get information from the previous government, and then, in fact, it was denied.

Bill C-58 takes a new approach. It is open by default, with the opportunity for all Canadians to access the information they are rightfully entitled to.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary mentioned open by default several times. We know that the Liberals campaigned in the last election on a promise to make things open by default, to open up the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices to access to information requests, yet they have now backed down on that promise. The Liberals have broken that promise.

Could the parliamentary secretary comment on why the Liberals decided to break that promise?

[Kim Rudd, Liberal, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this piece of legislation does in fact talk about the openness of the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices and access to briefing materials, information that in the past was not readily accessible by Canadians.

We are indeed fulfilling our promise to make sure that those in the Prime Minister's Office, ministers' offices, deputy ministers' offices, and the like would now have a reporting mechanism that allowed Canadians to see the very information the member is talking about.

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

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources. The former information commissioner, Robert Marleau, had this to say about Bill C-58:

There are many, many countries that are much better, and some that are not quite as advanced technologically as we are. We are not the shining light, even after this legislation, and we were in 1983. In 1983 most countries looked to us for innovation and transparency, and we've lost that halo.

This is from a knowledgeable, non-partisan observer. Although Bill C-58 includes some welcome efforts at transparency, it falls far short of what provincial governments, such as B.C. and Alberta, are doing in this country. I would ask the parliamentary secretary if she does not agree that the government should do better.

[Kim Rudd, Liberal, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think that is exactly the point. The mandatory review every five years is about making it better. It is about looking at each piece of legislation as we change as a country and as a society, as technology changes, and as opportunities to make things better come about. The mandatory five-year review speaks exactly to that.

This bill has not been reviewed since it was created in 1983. In 2016, the President of the Treasury Board made a commitment and started along this process. I am very happy to stand here and talk about Bill C-58, because I think it is a step in the right direction. Five years from now, we may be back here having a conversation about how our digital world has changed and how Canadians want us to respond to them, and we will be reacting to that.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today for the first time since we all returned home this summer at the conclusion of an intense session.

I appreciate this opportunity to speak to Bill C-58, an act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

This bill will amend the Access to Information Act of 1984—I mean 1983. I am smiling as I say this. You will understand why in a moment.

The amendments to this act will affect every organization that sends information to federal institutions and every person who tries to obtain information.

Think back to 1983. Does anyone here remember who was in power? Who was the Prime Minister of Canada? No, it was not Mr. Mulroney, it was Mr. Trudeau, Trudeau senior. Trudeau senior was in power, he tabled this act in 1983, and today, his son is going to fix a past mistake. The Liberals passed legislation only to realize that it fell short of Canadians' expectations. That historical tidbit is why I was smiling earlier.

Reforming the Access to Information Act is a good idea. As parliamentarians, it is a good idea for us to open our eyes, to want to improve our systems and our laws. Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, it seems that this bill is once again just smoke and mirrors. That is what we are used to from the Liberal government. The bill has no substance. On the surface it appears to be a wonderful thing, but in reality it is a hollow bill.

This reform does not even fulfill the promise that the Liberals made during the 2015 election campaign. They said that they were going to extend the act so that it applied to the Prime Minister's and minsters' offices.

Here is the proposed wording in Bill C-58:

An Act to extend the present laws of Canada that provide access to information under the control of the Government of Canada and to provide for the proactive publication of certain information.

As parliamentarians, we do a lot of research to be able to provide clear and transparent information. I took the liberty of looking up the meaning of the word “proactive”. According to the dictionary, to be proactive means, “to be enterprising, to take initiative or to act on one's own initiative without waiting to be asked or instructed to do something”. The government is proposing legislation absent any accompanying framework.

I also looked up the word “appearance”. Excuse me, I meant to say “transparency”, but it all relates because what the Liberals are interested in is the appearance of transparency. The dictionary defines “transparency” as, “complete accessibility to information regarding public opinion”. If I am smiling yet again, it is because I was pleasantly surprised to see the example that followed, which was, “demanding transparency regarding political party financing”.

As fate would have it, we are talking about a Liberal bill and the dictionary gives an example that talks about transparency around political financing. I mention this in the House because I hope that the people watching at home will question the transparency of the Liberals' fundraising activities.

Let us recall that the Liberals made a promise about this bill during the election campaign, but they also made a lot of other campaign promises that they have not kept. A lot of people probably do not remember a very popular promise in the Montreal region, that of bringing back Canada Post letter carriers and their routes. The promise was made in 2015 and there has been a technological evolution since. I do not know whether the Liberals have evolved, but we in the Conservative Party have evolved.

Mr. Harper, our prime minister at the time, decided to manage public resources very carefully and to provide the same service to all Canadians. To get themselves elected and to play to the crowds, the Liberals promised that they were going to put the letter carriers back on the job. They are still not there. The Liberals also promised to reduce the tax rate for our businesses. I will come back to that later because, in terms of tax rates for businesses and of respecting SMEs, we are now seeing how this government treats the businesses that create jobs in Canada.

The Liberals also said that they would run a slight deficit of $10 billion and that they would get back to balanced budgets before the next election. They went on to waste a bit of money. I have no problem with investments when there is a plan. The Liberals, however, have no plan and they are making huge expenditures with no control or proper management of the public purse. The parliamentary budget officer, an independent officer of Parliament, cannot see the day when Canada's budget will again be balanced. It is comforting to have the Liberals in power.

The Liberals also said that it would be the last election where the current system would be used to choose the 338 members of Parliament who represent Canadians. The Liberals derided the committee, thanked the minister, and then removed her from her portfolio.

We are now talking about tax reform. Small and medium-sized businesses are the key economic drivers in my riding. We do not have a lot of big public multinationals, and in fact they do not represent the majority of businesses in Canada. They are big businesses, but the lifeblood of our regions and the Canadian economy are our SMEs. The Liberals never mentioned this during their election campaign, and today, they are taking away their incentive to thrive. These businesses have the right to prosper. These business owners, men and women, get up early every day and have to deal with the stress of managing their businesses and ensure that they do thrive. When they are able to thrive, they can provide jobs to our middle class, which we Conservatives stand up for. It is important to support our SMEs instead of stifling them. I received a text message from a business in Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier; I actually talked about it last week.

I will be told that I am biased, so I will quote an article from the wise and respectable newspaper Le Devoir from September 15, 2017, written by Shawn McCarthy, president of the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom:

The Liberals promised that the ATI law would be amended to apply to the Prime Minister's Office and offices of ministers. [Bill] C-58 does nothing of the sort. It maintains the status quo.

When the [Liberal] government released its long-awaited bill to reform the 34-year-old Access to Information Act on a sunny Friday afternoon before Parliament's summer recess, it gave itself a check mark in the promise-kept column.

[Bill] C-58 represents an improvement over the current system. And the Liberals suggest it as a first step, with promises of more sweeping reforms some time later. But why wait?

Anyone taking the time to review C-58 before Parliament resumes September 18 will find the Liberals come up short on election promises made on Access to Information reform in 2015. As the Centre for Law and Democracy noted in a review of C-58, the proposed legislation “is far more conspicuous for what it fails to do.”

Let's look at those promises, starting with one the bill seems to have delivered—enhanced powers for the Information Commissioner. Bill C-58 gives the commissioner the overdue power to order government departments to disclose information.

The government promised to eliminate all ATI fees except the nominal $5 application fee. That promise was delivered before C-58 was tabled.

The Liberals did not need this bill. I will read another section from the article: “The Liberals promised that the Act would apply to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and offices of ministers. C-58 does nothing of the sort. It maintains the status quo.”

I could go on, but I will stop there by saying that, although it seems good on the surface, this bill has no substance.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the hon. member and others in the House that the legislation has not been touched in 30 years. That was part of the reason we campaigned on openness and transparency and why this government is moving forward with the changes suggested in the legislation.

One of the initiatives in the bill includes taking away the fee, so there will only be a $5 filing fee and everyone can have access to information. We do not want it to be cost prohibitive. Initiatives also include proactive disclosure for the PM's Office and ministers' offices, proactive disclosure for institutions that support Parliament, service improvements that will expedite the length of time for these requests, and reviews every five years. Does the member support these initiatives?

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

If she had listened to my introduction, she would have heard me congratulate the government on having had the idea to bring in more effective measures to increase transparency and improve access to information.

In her intervention, my colleague mentioned the $5 fee, but the Liberals did not need a bill to bring that in. That was already done. What I am saying is that this is a hollow bill that has no teeth. We are wasting our time. We should have a clearly defined bill that allows us to proceed quickly.

Someone across the way mentioned a step-by-step approach earlier. I prefer to proceed quickly in the interest of all Canadians.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and for the excellent corn on the cob from Neuville.

I would like to talk about the fact that this is just another broken Liberal government promise. It promised to extend access to information to the Prime Minister's Office and to ministers' offices. Unfortunately, it is not doing that. Instead, it is actually creating a new loophole. This is making things worse, because requests for information will be rejected from now on if they are deemed too general, if they seriously hinder government operations, or if they are filed in bad faith.

Does my colleague agree that this makes no sense? This kind of vocabulary gives too much latitude and will result in too many access to information requests being arbitrarily rejected.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague. I am delighted that he had a chance to taste Neuville's delicious sweet corn. This is not a competition, of course, because I know there are corn farmers in every riding. I am just happy to have the opportunity to let all the members of this House know that Neuville sweet corn has received a protected geographical indication, or PGI.

To answer my colleague's question, yes, this bill is hollow. What I find disappointing about this government is that it is wasting our time. It is introducing laws and saying it will roll them out gradually, but it is incapable of defining them clearly. From reading this bill, it is obvious that consumers and the various organizations that usually need to submit access to information requests will receive less information. That is troubling. Information needs to be shared.

I can understand that some information needs to remain confidential in certain situations, such as information about our military strategy. During the NAFTA negotiations, there may be some information we have to withhold as good negotiators. Not that I think the Liberals are good negotiators, but that is another story.

In short, this Liberal bill is deeply troubling.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to stand in the House to speak to Bill C-58 for the first time.

Let us look back at how we got to where we are today. When the Liberals were campaigning in 2015, I believe it was on the tenth day that the member for Papineau, now the Prime Minister, stood before Canadians and said that a government under him would be the most open and transparent in Canadian history. Man, how far we have fallen from those comments. Canadians probably had some hope at that point, but shortly thereafter it was a case of the government saying, “We were just joking, do not take us seriously on things such as the debt perhaps and other areas.”

Early on we heard things in the opposition and Canadians found out through mechanisms such as access to information and others about things such as pay to play. I will refresh the House's memory that early in the government's mandate, in every mandate letter the Prime Minister directed his ministers to conduct themselves to the full extent of the law and to be able to take the most fine-grained public scrutiny. What we have seen to this point is some ministers operating as if they are above the law, and that includes the Prime Minister as well.

Early last year, the Minister of Justice perhaps forgot whether she was representing her riding at a pay-to-play event where a fee was charged for dinner with a a full house of solicitors and lawyers at a Toronto law firm. The House reminded her of the distinction and asked very cautiously whether she was acting as a member of Parliament for her area or the Minister of Justice at the time. I think we saw a bit of retraction there.

We have a Prime Minister who himself is under multiple investigations by the Ethics Commissioner. One thing that keeps coming up—and I am not going to minimize this—is his vacation with the Aga Khan. I do not judge anybody. We work very hard as members of Parliament and people should be able to take their vacations when they can, but our Prime Minister has probably shown disregard for the rules. The rules do not apply to him in terms of public expenditures and he has refused to this point to answer any questions on the huge cost that has been passed on to Canadians as a result. He has deferred the questions and, some might say, blamed the very public servants whom we trust, the public servants who put on their uniforms every day knowing full well that they are going to encounter danger. When we pick up the phone and dial 911, they come running regardless of any illness or stress they are facing, without exception. Instead of answering the question, our Prime Minister has deferred every question on the cost of his trip to the RCMP, perhaps even blaming them for the exorbitant costs associated with it. That is shameful.

This speaks to where we are today with the Liberals who have continually blamed the government and Parliaments of previous years and have asserted that they are “modernizing” the government and this House. They use that term all the time.

Time and again, Liberal ministers and perhaps the Prime Minister himself have stood with their hands on their hearts and used the words “open and transparent” when talking about about consultations on things such as electoral reform and carbon pricing. They were going from coast to coast to coast to talk to Canadians about, let us get this right, a campaign promise of theirs. They were going to reduce the small business tax. Where did that go? I guess we are probably going to be talking about the liberals' unfair tax plan in a mere 45 minutes. That is another broken promise, and it is not open or transparent at all. It is disappointing.

The Liberals campaigned on real change. The second page of their campaign document read:

Together, we can restore a sense of trust in our democracy. Greater openness and transparency are fundamental to accomplishing this.

Those are great words, but we have not seen action by the Liberals. As a matter of fact, the next paragraph stated:

...our objective is nothing less than making transparency a fundamental principle across the Government of Canada.

Where has that gone? It is gone. Everything they are doing absolutely flies in the face of their campaign promises.

Again, they are talking about modernization of the House, doing things better here and better for Canadians. I am going to bring us back to just before we rose in June, the six or eight weeks when the House leader, a mere 18 months into her tenure as a member of Parliament, tabled a document, a discussion paper. She wanted to have a discussion in the House on how we could make the House better and do things better. I have been a member of Parliament for the same time she has, and while we all have ideas on how we can make things efficient and smooth, I would not be as arrogant to think I can put a paper together, put it out in the media, and suggest that we are going to do things better when this House belongs to Canadians. It does not belong to me or the members who are present. It belongs to those in the gallery and those who elect us to be here and represent Canadians.

What the Liberals have done with Bill C-58 under the guise of being open and transparent is to stop what has brought us here. We have a Prime Minister who is under multiple investigations. We have had patronage appointments, as access to information requests have found out. What they want to do is to stop that. They do not want Canadians to know. They want the power to say what is frivolous and without merit. That is unacceptable.

We are smack in the middle of international Right to Know Week, which runs from September 25 to October 1. There are 10 principles of right to know, which I found on the government website. Number one is that “Access to information is a right of everyone.” Number two is “Access is the rule—secrecy is the exception!” We agree. There are certain things that we do not put into the hands of others. As my hon. colleague mentioned earlier, defence issues are one of them, or things that could tip off those with nefarious ideas.

However, simple everyday common information that the public, and indeed the opposition and those who represent the public, require to do their everyday jobs is fundamental. The things they are talking about in Bill C-58 are inherent principles and rights that the public and opposition already have. This does not need to be done.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a couple of the member's colleagues and he questioned the commissioner's ability to declare requests vexatious or made in bad faith. The suggestion by a couple of his colleagues was that a better way to deal with this would be to go back to charging people who want to make access to information requests.

Does the member agree that the way to deal with vexatious and bad-faith submissions is to charge people for the requests, because that would serve as a deterrent, as his fellow colleagues have suggested?

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, again, this is just a deflection tactic by the government. The reality is that we are here to talk about its open and transparent ways. The Liberals have proven time and again over the last 24-plus months that they have not been open and transparent.

I was reading the bill, and proposed section 6 deals specifically with the government's ability to say no to requests that might be vexatious or seen to be frivolous. The fact is that the government would be able to make that decision when it should instead be made by an independent source regardless of the mechanism. It should be decided by an independent source if we are truly going to be open and transparent.

If the Liberals truly want to live up to being open and transparent, they would change the bill and go through with the good points in it and scrap the ones that are controversial.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, does the member agree with the NDP and our concerns that the Liberals are breaking their promise to make the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices open to these access to information requests? This is not open and transparent government. This is closing the doors.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have not seen the amendment that my hon. B.C. colleague has mentioned and so I cannot speak directly to that, but I reiterate my comments. We are here today as a result of access to information requests. We are here because we have a Prime Minister, a cabinet, and a government that have been under investigation for questionable actions and decisions. I think I will leave it at that.

We need to make sure that Canadians have the mechanism to be able to ask for the information they require so that we can be held to the highest account, and indeed live up to the mandate letters that the Prime Minister gave his ministers by his own penmanship, saying that they should be able to withstand the highest public scrutiny. However, to this point, the reason we are here today is that time and again they have proven that they cannot.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are all politicians. Most of us were elected two years ago, and some were elected during by-elections. However, when we live by politics, it is very important to keep our promises.

What kind of signal is the government sending to people when the Liberals say something during the election campaign but do the reverse when they are in office?

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the selective memory of our current government is interesting. Indeed, the Prime Minister himself, when he was a member of Parliament in the last Parliament, tabled Bill C-613, which absolutely flies in the face of what his current government is tabling. It is like the debt. It is like the carbon tax. It is like the small business tax that the Liberals promised to lower.

Once they got into power, they kicked up their heels and brought all their friends in and paid them via high-priced patronage appointments. They kind of forgot what their promises to Canadians were. However, I will tell the member that we on this side and Canadians will not forget.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, during their respective campaigns, the Liberal government and the Conservative government before them promised to amend the Access to Information Act, specifically by expanding the act to apply to the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices. After the Conservative government failed to take the necessary steps to modernize the act, the Liberal government is making an attempt with Bill C-58, which seeks to amend the Access to Information Act,1983.

This law is essential because it allows Canadians to apply to federal institutions to get access to information on the government and on government institutions. With Bill C-58, the government's goal is to amend access to information, the Privacy Act and other acts that deal with the same subject.

Canada was a pioneer in access to information. We were one of the first countries to pass legislation about information, in 1983. Today, with this bill, the government is seriously compromising access to information.

The bill has many problems. Many recommendations from the Information Commissioner and from the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics have not been considered.

We are asking that all these recommendations be incorporated into the bill, which currently contains so few as to prompt us to wonder whether the government even read their work. It feels like it was all for naught. What is the point in asking expert organizations to make recommendations if those are not taken into account in the government's bill?

Members of the NDP, including the former member for Winnipeg Centre, tried several times in 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2014, to introduce proper legislation modernizing the Access to Information Act. All those initiatives were rejected even though the former government and the current government claimed to want to amend the act.

The NDP tried very hard to propose concrete amendments to modernize the act and allow people to have better access to information. However, the Conservative government and the current Liberal government both refused to listen.

Except for the fact that the Information Commissioner has the power to order the disclosure of information, which is one of the important points that we have long been calling for, and that the bill provides for a legislative review every five years, the NDP believes the bill is inadequate and does not go far enough. That is why the NDP is totally opposed to the bill at second reading.

Despite its election promises, the government does not really want to be transparent and that is unacceptable. I think it goes without saying that Canadians ought to have the right to review the information that the government does not want to publish. Since it governs at their pleasure, it is accountable to them.

The Liberals do not want to extend the act to the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices. Do they have something to hide? The government must set an example and obey the law. It cannot ask Canadians to obey the law if its own members do not. The government is not above the law, nor is it above Canadians.

Why is the government reneging on its promise? I know that this is not the first time that the government has broken one of its promises. The people have every right to wonder how many other election promises the Liberals will break, how much more backpedalling they will do, as they are doing now. The Liberals are hiding behind this bill and that is not right.

I will remind members what the Prime Minister kept saying during the campaign, which is, “A country's information system is at the very heart of the principle of open government.” “Transparent government is good government.”

The Prime Minister himself seems to be saying that the Liberal government is neither open nor good. He also claimed to want to extend the act to the Prime Minister's Office, to other ministers' offices, and to administrative institutions supporting Parliament and the courts. However, once in power, the government had no qualms about breaking this campaign promise, even though it was so important to Canadians, who have been calling for the modernization of the Access to Information Act for a few years now.

Perhaps the government should reacquaint itself with its election promises to realize that it did exactly the opposite in this bill. Canadians are increasingly interested in the government's actions.

In fact, they made 81% more access to information requests in 2015-16 as compared to five years ago, which is their right. Canadians want to know how their money is being spent and how the government acts by having access to some confidential documents. Canadians must be able to have access to information to avoid all sorts of scandals, such as the sponsorship scandal, in which the government lied to the public by refusing to release the invoices from its suppliers.

Canada currently ranks 49th in terms of right to information legislation. The bill would enable it to move up from 49th to 46th place, but this small gain shows full well that this bill does not go far enough. It is just window dressing.

With this bill, the government is making information less available to people. For example, the bill does away with the government's obligation to publish information about government organization mandates. It even gives officials the right to decline access to information requests that they feel, for whatever reason, are made in bad faith.

The NDP cannot support this bill at second reading for two main reasons. First, despite the election promise, it does not expand the act to cover the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices. Second, it does not reflect crucial recommendations by the Information Commissioner and the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

The Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics produced a report with 32 recommendations, and the Information Commissioner's report contains 85. The government had plenty to draw on, but it included very few of those recommendations in its bill. The Liberals are so proud of their proactive disclosure idea, but it does not really give people better access to information. The government should also provide criteria for deciding whether a request is overly broad or cannot be processed. Departments will also not be required to publish their org charts, their powers, duties, and functions, or descriptions of all classes of documents they are responsible for.

The bill imposes no specific legal obligation to document cases of failure to comply or appropriate sanctions, which was a key issue for the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. This bill also fails to shorten deadlines for access to information, which are currently much too long at up to 200 days, and to reduce the number of extensions.

For example, in April 2016, The Globe and Mail reported that it took more than a year for the RCMP to provide them with statistics for its series of investigative reports titled Unfounded, which revealed that police dismiss one in five sexual assault claims as baseless. What makes the government think it can take so long to provide citizens with this information? This clearly shows that access to information is vital and that it can bring to light certain things that organizations and citizens need to know about.

Naturally, we want the government to extend the act to cover Prime Minister's Office and the offices of other ministers as well, which is a priority for citizens and one of the main changes they have been calling for. We support the recommendations made by the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics and the Information Commissioner. We need to modernize the Access to Information Act, but we cannot allow the government to take an authoritarian approach and do away with some of the rights currently provided under the act in its present form.

Canadians do not want their rights taken away. They are simply asking for the act to be modernized, because it is now out of date. Canada was seen as a pioneer in the area of access to information. With this bill, the government is trying to take rights away from people rather than to give them more, as it promised during the election campaign. Canadians deserve answers from the government. It must explain to us all why it has decided to limit access to information from the Prime Minister's Office and the offices of the other ministers and, in its bill, to remove some rights that were, in fact, in the act.

The government must explain to us all why it is not keeping one of its main campaign promises. It is the government's duty to provide explanations to the Canadians who are demanding answers.

In conclusion, access to information is the basis of democracy. Sadly, the government is trying to obstruct democracy with this bill, even though it promised to expand the legislation for Canadians. There was never any question of a bill of this kind during their campaign.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the legislation before us would make significant changes to the way information would be accessed. There is a wonderful component about proactive disclosure, something we believe Canadians want and deserve. We should support that. There is an interesting aspect that empowers the commissioner to order information to be released. This is one of the strongest aspects in the legislation. In so many ways, our system will be healthier as a direct result. There would be more accountability and transparency. The bill is all about that.

Would the member not acknowledge and support the principles of what our government has been able to achieve within the legislation, and perhaps share some of the ideas she talks about, possibly at the standing committee? We know we are not going to wait another 30 years before we have to modernize the act. The legislation calls for reviewing and updating the act on a more regular basis. Would she not agree that this is good for Canadians?

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the issue. I want to support more than just principles. I want to support concrete actions.

We can have proactive disclosure now. We do not need a bill for it; it is already possible. It is important not to confuse proactive disclosure with access to information. Canadians must understand that it is not the same thing and that access to information is not provided through proactive disclosure. They are two separate things.

I think it is unfortunate that this bill is now mixing up the two when there is a clear difference. A tangible action would be to follow the 32 recommendations of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, and the 85 recommendations of the Office of the Information Commissioner. Those are tangible actions that I am ready to support.

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

Mr. Speaker, my sincere thanks to my colleague, the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, for her speech. I completely agree with her that this bill is weaker than what the Liberal Party had promised in the past election campaign.

Does my colleague think it is possible to propose changes to this bill in the committee in question? If the government were to support the amendments to strengthen this bill, would the NDP support them?

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, not only is it possible to improve this bill, it is vital that we do so.

Yesterday at an event, I noticed how popular my colleague is with young women.

I am the mother of teenagers and young adults. I have noticed among some of my constituents that younger people want and have access to information. I am always amazed to see how much more my children know than I did when I was their age. They want to know. They seek information. They will quickly realize that they have hit a wall when it comes to accessing information.

To meet current needs, it is vital that we have real legislation that provides access to information. Today, people want to know and it is their right; they need information. We have to give them the means to access it.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-58, An Act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, because in my work as an MP I often have to obtain information beyond that provided by the government.

It is very important to me to speak to this bill. I have come to realize that Canadians across the country, including the constituents of Drummond, often seek information to which they do not necessarily have access. It should be known that the government decides to voluntarily disclose some information, but not all. I discovered this when I was elected in 2011. I was looking for a lot of information about shale gas and fracking, because that was a hot topic in the riding of Drummond and across Quebec at the time. I realized that the federal government at the time had conducted research and several studies and put together several review committees, but that not all these reports had been made public.

I ended up having to submit some access to information requests, which is when I realized the limitations of the Access to Information Act. Many passages in the documents I received had been blacked out and made unreadable. Other documents took months and months to reach me. Furthermore, I recently asked a series of questions about the appointment of Ms. Meilleur as official languages commissioner. She eventually took herself out of the running, which I thought was a wise decision. At the time, I asked the government some questions about contact between Ms. Meilleur and officials in the Prime Minister's office and contact between her and officials at Canadian Heritage. Since the answers I received were totally unsatisfactory, I submitted some access to information requests. Right now, I am told, the wait time to receive even a partial answer from Canadian Heritage is 105 days. For the Treasury Board, it is 90 days, and for the Department of Justice, it is 120 days.

I am not going receive my answers before the new commissioner is appointed. It is easy to see how important it is to have access to this information. I would like to congratulate all the members on the ethics committee for the work they did. They conducted a study and issued a number of recommendations. The ethics commissioner made the same recommendations. The time was ripe for this debate, seeing as this law has been on the books for more than 30 years and never been reviewed. It is worth noting that the sole reason we have this bill is to fulfill one of the Liberals' election promises. The Prime Minister promised during the campaign that he would review the Access to Information Act and extend this act to cover the Prime Minister's office and the ministers' offices.

Unfortunately, I do not see that anywhere in Bill C-58. I asked my Liberal colleagues about this, and they told me it had been extended to ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's office, but proactive disclosure does not mean extending the Access to Information Act to the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices. It is not the same thing. Proactive disclosure, as the word "proactive" implies, means that people choose what they want to disclose, but often, what people want is the information the government chooses not to disclose. That is the difference, and that is why the Access to Information Act is so important.

Earlier, I shared some examples to do with shale gas, fracking, and the appointment of an official languages commissioner who apparently had ties to the government. In cases like those, it is important for people to have access to information that the government chooses not to disclose for various reasons.

I have some other concerns about this bill. For example, it adds new loopholes. As I mentioned, for various reasons, information can be blacked out or entire reports can be nothing but blank pages. The pages exist, but all that is provided is blank pages. That is a problem we have already.

Now there will be a new loophole allowing departments to decline to process requests that they deem overly broad, that they feel would seriously interfere with government operations, or that they think are made in bad faith.

I will come back to those last two very important elements. Obviously, if the government deliberately decides, for example, not to disclose large quantities of research and studies conducted by Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada on fracking and shale gas and I request it, a lot of work will need to be done to gather and process all of that information. I am not asking for it because I am acting in bad faith or because I want to interfere with the government's work. I am asking for it because residents of Drummond and Canadians paid for that information. It should already be available. However, I have to go through the Access to Information Act to give people access to that information. The government cannot start saying that this will create too much work. Of course if the government does not disclose information proactively, then it will create a lot of work for itself down the road.

The government could also determine that the request was made in bad faith. No definition, details, or explanation is provided in that regard. That means that anyone can decide that a request was made in bad faith. If I ask a question about the connection between the current government and Ms. Meilleur's appointment as official languages commissioner, my request could be deemed to have been made in bad faith, when in actual fact it is extremely important that Canadians have that information in order to make sure that the Liberals do not make the same mistake again.

This is completely unacceptable, and that is why we will be voting against this bill. For a government that claims to want to be transparent and to improve access to information, this bill is not going to work at all.

I would like to talk about the battle that the NDP has been waging since the mid-2000s to improve the Access to Information Act. My former colleague, MP Pat Martin, tried a number of times to improve the Access to Information Act. Unfortunately, the Conservative government at the time thwarted all of his attempts. It was really disappointing.

We have nothing against the government's much-vaunted proactive disclosure. It is good in principle. However, proactive disclosure is not the same thing as the Access to Information Act. Obviously, if we already had more proactive disclosure, we would not have to submit so many access to information requests. However, the fact remains that the government could still, at any time and for any reason, decide not to disclose certain information. That is why the Access to Information Act is so important. It needs to be revised and improved. This bill will not do the trick, and that is why we need to fix it.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I firmly believe that this bill will improve access to information for all Canadians. According to the specifics of the bill, proactive disclosure will apply to 240 government departments and agencies, including the Prime Minister's office, MPs' offices, and the institution of Parliament.

Why is the NDP siding with the Conservatives in refusing to give Canadians better access to information?

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, who does such excellent work on the Standing Committee on Official Languages, on which I also sit.

As the member well knows, proactive disclosure is not the same thing as direct access to information. He knows full well that Canadian Heritage refused to proactively disclose the connection between the department and the individual it had decided to appoint as official languages commissioner. He knows full well that the Prime Minister's Office refused to proactively disclose its connection to Ms. Meilleur when it decided to appoint her official languages commissioner.

That is why we need access to information legislation that is robust and that applies to the Prime Minister's Officer and all ministers' offices, but this bill does not provide for that.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague from Saint Boniface—Saint Vital for his assurances that this document will indeed provide Canadians with more access to information, but I want to ask my hon. colleague from Drummond if he feels some uneasiness.

Time and again, for the last 24 months, we have heard promises of openness and transparency from the government, but it has again failed us. It has failed Canadians. It has not lived up to those promises time and again. This is merely another opportunity for the government to pick and choose what it tells Canadians, to go about things its own way, to make the laws for itself, and to shut out Canadians and those who have been elected to represent them from the information that is critical to Canadians.

I wonder if he feels exactly the same way as those on this side of the House.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his question and his comment.

He is quite right. This is another broken promise from this Liberal government. It made a clear, specific promise that it would extend the Access to Information Act to the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices.

Why did the government go back on its word? Why did it not keep its promise? I do not understand. We find it completely unacceptable to renege on such a clear and specific promise. This promise was even explicit in the mandate letter.

It is unacceptable to backtrack without a valid reason, and yet that is what the Liberals are doing. They are trying to play a shell game by saying that there will be proactive disclosure, but that is not the same thing. One must not confuse carrots and potatoes; they are two different things. They want us to believe their malarkey.

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

Mr. Speaker, as we gather today to debate Bill C-58, we should be mindful of the fact that this is international Right to Know Week. As we gather here, in another part of town the Information Commissioner is holding a full-day conference on declaring that access to information is a fundamental human right. In that case, I wonder if my colleague would agree that our human rights are violated when Bill C-58 falls so short of being true access to open government and access to information.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, not only does Bill C-58 not extend the Access to Information Act, but it goes even further by giving departments loopholes so they can refuse to process access to information requests on the grounds that, for example, they were made in bad faith or would create too much work for public servants. The government cannot do things like that.

I have submitted plenty of access to information requests about fracking and shale gas. Of course the departments got annoyed at me for pestering them, but why did they not disclose that information themselves? Because they did not want to.

It could easily happen again. The government will disclose the information that makes it look good, and any information that could be harmful or embarrassing to it will be tucked away where no one can get at it. This is utterly unacceptable. These are not the actions of a transparent government that respects the people. It needs to change its attitude.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

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

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask that the vote be deferred to the expiry of the time provided for government orders on Wednesday, September 27.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Accordingly, the recorded division stands deferred until Wednesday, September 27, 2017, at the expiry of the time provided for government orders.