Mr. Speaker, I will be quite brief. I rise in support of the motion. I congratulate the hon. member for Winnipeg St. James on his motion that will help to bring Canada fully into the 20th century in terms of business.
Other countries are ahead of us by many years in terms of the requirement to disclose. I approach the question perhaps a little differently than my colleagues who have spoken before. It has to do with the question of fiduciary responsibility. We know the term fiduciary responsibility applies to business, to stock companies and so on. That responsibility is to the stockholders, to the people who buy the stocks, who are entitled to attend annual meetings and who presumably are entitled to all pertinent information about the company, the financial information particularly.
We have lagged behind in this country by not acknowledging that salaries, especially significant salaries of senior executives, have been exempt. It would seem to me, and I do not want to comment on the size of the salaries or the stock options, the perks or whatever, that a lot of senior executives probably deserve more than they are making. Perhaps some of them deserve less. Those are privately held opinions as often citizens hold about members of Parliament as to whether their salaries are adequate, overadequate or under, or whatever.
Since the incomes of those senior executives have a direct relationship with the profitability of the company and with the dividends that are paid and so on and presumably in the end the value of the stock that it would be in the positive interests of that business if those things were revealed. A prospective sharehold-
er then would not be made aware of only part of the financial information it needs but would have all of the financial information. I believe that is correct.
In the case of crown corporations naturally the fiduciary responsibility is to the people of Canada, to the citizens. It seems to me that they are as entitled to that kind of information as are private shareholders in companies.
It is for those reasons that I rise in wholehearted support. I hope this goes ahead and the thrust of this motion prompts us to adopt legislation that will bring us into line at least with other countries we compete with around the world because it will be good for our business and good for investment in this country.