Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In order to demonstrate that option A is not the preferred option, from the point of view of this member--and I'm hoping, of course, in all good faith, to convince members opposite, including Mr. Godin, of the alternatives that may be there--I'm simply referring to what I regard as being a superior option among the four that were listed here.
I'm recommending that this be considered as preferable to option A. Option C says:
Following the tabling of additional cost information before the committee on March 16, 2011, and the statement by the Minister of Public Safety on March 17, 2011 that no further information was being withheld as a cabinet confidence, the committee finds that the government has now provided the committee and Parliament with its best available departmental cost estimates. The committee therefore finds that no further action with respect to this question of privilege is necessary.
I think that is a superior motion, which I think more accurately reflects the actual situation. If there is a concern that we need to adjust our practices.... And this is why I was so interested in the testimony of Professor Franks when he was here. I asked a number of questions based on his testimony. He is pointing out that there appear to be some inherent problems. They don't exist because of this government; they don't exist because of the previous government. They have been around for a long time, and they should be corrected in the interests of having a more open process.
So you could look, potentially, at option D, which speaks to the need to actually, in the future, look toward a more open process of government budgeting, system-wide, systematically. Let me just look at what that option suggests, because I think it is a very powerful option. The option the analysts have written down here is:
In a parliamentary democracy, it is incumbent upon the government to balance the need for transparency and openness in operations with the need, in some circumstances, that it withhold certain important information from the public. The committee finds that no further action with respect to the matters reviewed here is necessary, and tables its findings in this matter so they form part of the parliamentary record. The committee hopes
--and this is the important and I think constructive part--
that its observations may serve in future as a source of information and reference for other Commonwealth jurisdictions, future incarnations of this committee, and future Parliaments, should this complex issue arise once again.
This would of course suggest very strongly that we ought to take into account the proposals that have been put forward by those who testified before us on the system issues that are involved, and that means primarily by Professor Franks, and that we look toward correcting the situation so that in the future these kinds of situations simply can't arise. What would happen in the future would be that in the event a bill is tabled in the House at second reading and doesn't have a list of documents attached to it, then it simply can't proceed. It goes back and there is a very clear objective list--not a shifting list, not a list that is unclear, not a list that is manipulative for partisan reasons by any of the parties, government or opposition, but a simple, clear, objective set of costs that can then be challenged if there is to doubt as to the actual veracity of those costs.
One of the things we haven't done in all these hearings is actually ask if we think that any of the documents provided are problematic, that they are using the wrong inflation figures, the wrong figures as related to the amortization of costs and so on. We didn't get into any of that stuff. The committee that is actually responsible, the finance committee, never had a chance to get into that sort of thing. That would be very helpful in the future on all kinds of legislation, whether it's a Conservative government, a coalition government, or whatever.
I strongly suggest that we consider option D as the preferred option. I would suggest option C is the second choice. But option A is really the option that least reflects any kind of attempt to do constructive work, and moreover least reflects in any way the testimony, as one would expect, given the fact that it was tabled before we had finished hearing all the testimony and in fact appears to have been pre-written at some point before that.
Let's do the right thing and actually try to have this report help to build a constructive and more open interaction between the Government of Canada and the Parliament of Canada.