Mr. Chair, I certainly appreciate MP Saini's amendment. It gives an opportunity to talk a little bit about the importance of both transparency and accountability.
I do know that there have been many criticisms levelled against this government, by both my party and other parties, regarding its lack of transparency. It is certainly not showing that it is open by default, as it promised in 2015, with promises for things like changes to the Access to Information Act that even the Information Commissioner criticized as actually being not helpful and even, in some cases, regressive.
That has not changed. It's actually only gotten worse since COVID-19. Many reporters as well as civil society members have criticized how the government's snail's pace on access to information has gotten even slower, as if those snails were put in the freezer. It takes a lot more to see any positivity.
Mr. Saini is trying to do a good thing here by trying to make the minister more transparent, specifically on public participation.
As we said earlier, Conservatives support public participation. We think it is incredibly important that in a country as large and diverse as Canada there be a mechanism whereby the minister can consult. We do think, though, that there should be some strengthening there, of course, of an all-hands-on-deck approach.
Given the fact that we believe there could be more transparency in what we hear from the minister, we are willing to support this amendment. As I said earlier in my comments to MP Bachrach, we've come prepared with a number of amendments that we believe would make the bill better. We have been listening to all members of Parliament, irrespective of their party, making sure that they are heard and also that their ideas, whether we agree with them or not, are debated. This is so that people who are watching at home can know that in a minority Parliament, we are all doing our jobs to scrutinize government legislation and to bring ideas that are perhaps new to the conversation.
MP May said earlier that she believed a number of groups wanted to see the idea of carbon budgets brought into it, something that was not allowed by the committee. I do think that we could have allowed that process. Maybe I'll let that now be water under the bridge and refer again to the amendment before us.
I will be supporting this amendment, simply because we do think that the consultations and the “what we heard” reports are essentially beneficial. Those are things the government should be doing. To have that enshrined in law makes sense. Maybe my colleagues have questions or other aspects they wish to raise, but we will be supporting MP Saini in regard to this.
I thank him for bringing forward an amendment that actually increases the transparency of the government, because it has been so woeful to date on so many different aspects. I even remember when, before he became the Liberal leader, in his capacity as an MP, Justin Trudeau tabled legislation to improve access to information. He was criticized later on for not actually implementing those ideas as Prime Minister. To see a little humility from the government side is a good thing. We will be supporting the amendment as presented.