Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise today in support of Bill C-216, the act that will bring several new crown corporations under the umbrella of the Access to Information Act.
When the bill was debated in the House back in December my colleague from Tobique—Mactaquac spoke to it. He addressed some concerns our party had with sections of the bill. There are concerns by some crown corporations that their competitors would be able to secure competitively sensitive information which could then be manipulated in such a way that would put the concerned corporations in a vulnerable position.
We have researched into the concerns of the corporations and have learned that under section 18 of the Access to Information Act these institutions can effectively exempt information of a sensitive nature in the competitive arena.
The PC Party through our party's address to the House on December 1, 1997 asked that the issues about which crown corporations were concerned be dealt with to cover all possible aspects that could jeopardize the competitiveness of these institutions.
Under sections 18 and 20 of the Access to Information Act these concerns have been addressed. Sections 18 and 20 are lengthy and I will not read them word for word, but I would like to say a few things in general about what these sections will cover.
Overall one section allows the withholding of information that is reasonably deemed to be of competitive sensitivity. In section 20 the act deals not only with government institutions but specifies that information provided by a third party to the government fall under many of the same stipulations as section 18 does for government owned information. This lends protection to corporations that may have concerns about their competitively sensitive information being available under the Access to Information Act.
We in the PC Party believe in more openness in government, but we also believe that competitiveness in Canada is essential to a successful marketplace. We do not want to jeopardize that balance of openness and competitiveness privilege by opening up information so much that it is easily used to take down one's competitors. We believe that this balance has been struck in the bill and we support it.