Thank you.
I have spent my adult life--40 years--as an independent watchdog monitoring Ottawa. It has meant uncovering many hundreds of secret activities engaged in by Ottawa. It has included everything from the politics behind Canada's Food Guide, which we put on our fridges, to the questionable practices and funding in the multi-billion-dollar technology partnerships program. I've had to go to court to try to get, among other things, airline safety and drug inspection reports.
I've also appeared before many parliamentary committees seeking a more accountable Ottawa since 1979. One such intervention helped in the passage of the only progressive amendment to the Access to Information Act, which created penalties for record tampering in Ottawa.
The Accountability Act, as I see it, promises much but delivers too little. I'll briefly outline three basic flaws in Bill C-2, and then offer some suggestions for improvement.
First, Bill C-2 extends, rather than curbs, the culture of entitlement in Ottawa. It caters to powerful interests. It expands, rather than curtails, the unaccountable central powers that the Prime Minister and cabinet hold. That includes maintaining the Prime Minister's grip on the appointment selection process and increasing the number of prime ministerial, PMO, and cabinet records excluded from public access. This act expands everything in the wrong direction.
Deputy ministers and deputy heads, as well, get more power and money. Huge empires are going to be created under this bill. They become accounting officers, managers of more audits, arbiters of departmental ethical conduct, and gatekeepers for departmental disclosures. The bill also adds a new, expensive, and powerful CEO crown corporation category to the growing management ranks, and I can assure you that they've already started.
Bill C-2 makes special secrecy deals for certain crown corporations like EDC, Canada Post, and AECL. This signals that Ottawa is open to having hundreds of other government agencies live by weaker accountability standards. Certainly the courts will look at it that way too--I've been in front of courts many times--as will hundreds of outside corporations doing business with Ottawa, which will also want to be less accountable.
In addition, lobbyists, who were the big winners in this act, get greater influence in Ottawa, not less, and a mandate to largely continue their activities in secret.
Some federal agencies are ignored by this bill, such as the military and security intelligence, which are badly in need of oversight and greater accountability.
The second flaw--I'm trying to analyze what's wrong with this bill, because I want to right it--is that it puts in place a weak and secretive system of review and auditing and places transparency on the endangered list. Various parliamentary officers are given ineffective oversight powers to check abuses. The scope of what parliamentary officers can review is limited, as some key government operations and records are placed well outside their mandates. They are also limited as to what they are allowed to report and say. With limited enforcement powers and no means provided for coordinated investigations, parliamentary officers end up being toothless.
Internal auditing reviews also become weaker and more secretive. Their terms of reference are firmly under management's control. Contracting practices are going to be made even more loosey-goosey because of looser rules and fast-tracking.
Drastically lowering the amount of public scrutiny that audits are subject to is not going to help. Much about the audit process is going to be made secret for up to 15 years. And yes, I was one of the people who got draft audits of the sponsorship reviews. Audits, remember, include matters vital to our safety, like airline and drug inspection reports. That's often overlooked.
The Auditor General's review powers are not really increased to follow the money. Sheila Fraser has told the committee that she doesn't want to do that, because in effect, to audit the corporate books, except in extreme cases, you need to get at the corporate books, and this act does not allow that. It's just for getting at government records.
I can go on about transparency, but I'll leave that until later.
The third and final flaw raises false expectations of better government performance and conduct because it sets limited goals. When it comes to spending, there are no spelled-out public service obligations set out in a purpose preamble section for the right to quality government programming and accountability.
Who is mandated under this act to audit and report on how well Ottawa is doing on alleviating income disparities, health and safety problems, and environmental degradation? These are management- and department-based conduct codes. They're not found in the statutes, and they are a mixed blessing because they're readily changeable, and therefore suspect.
Such managerial codes can handicap rather than help concerned employees in fully providing services to the public or coming forward when such efforts are being hampered.
The conduct service codes as well would do nothing to legally ensure that a proper record of decisions is kept. That's a real code; it's statutory. Nor would they advance the public's right to know immediately about health, safety, environmental, and consumer matters.
Besides its five-year internal reviews, the only probe of Bill C-2 is a one-time look at advertising and polling contracts. No provision is made for permanent, ongoing public parliamentary oversight, like that currently provided by this committee, of the bill's accountability standards and service performance promises.
It fails to set quality performance accountability objectives and standards, hasn't got that oversight, and doesn't link it to what we all think are very democratic rights and charter rights.
That's why, in a constructive fashion--and I have an earlier, longer submission--I've set out over a dozen areas for improving and amending these problem areas found not just in the access provisions but throughout the act. They include adding a purpose clause, which enshrines accountability standards and the public's right to know as part of the Canadian Charter of Rights; ensuring public access to the records of the Prime Minister and ministers, as well as Parliament; making the Public Appointments Commission an independent agency accountable to Parliament rather than an arm of the Prime Minister's Office; treating crown corporations no differently from any other agencies, and reducing rather than adding special exemptions and exclusions; broadening what the public knows about lobbyists' activities, government finances and contracts; releasing immediately audits on health, safety, environment, and consumer reports; regularly posting the exact salary and benefit information of public officials--I'm sure everybody would agree to that; following through on a commitment for a tougher Information Commissioner's office with binding order powers.
New ideas include open meetings. I'm not speaking about cabinet, but boards and commissions like the NCC should be required to hold public meetings. The Auditor General should hear and respond to complaints about government work and procedures. Make her office a little more democratic too.
There should be penalties for altering, withholding, and distorting government financial records; more coordination within accountability systems rather than empire-building; and joint investigations of such officers as the Auditor General and Information Commissioner.
And why not go international by setting up a centre for transparency, accountability, and anti-corruption here in Canada? And then, of course, you need the periodic review of the accountability standards by the designated parliamentary committee.
There are some modest reforms in this bill, I agree, but it doesn't go far enough to rein in Ottawa's mandarins and power structures. It doesn't hold them to account. It doesn't have conduct that is meant to be exceptional--and I've been waiting for this.
The answer doesn't lie, though, in rushing through another act. Sure, you guys should go ahead and do as much as you can, but if you're going to make officials more powerful, less reflective, and more able to retreat even further behind closed doors, why bother? Who needs yet more, rather than less, government waste and mistakes?
Consider my suggestions to reverse this, and make Ottawa accountable, transparent, compassionate, and credible, because that's what this government has to do.
Thank you.