Mr. Speaker, I will add a few points to this important debate. We are talking about the destruction of evidence of what government officials and bureaucrats do. It seems the whole concept is one of accountability of which I am strongly in favour.
When I was first elected in 1993 I inherited all of the office equipment of my predecessor and the motor on the shredder was burned out. Everything in the office was shredded. Apparently they had bags and bags of shredded paper and a burned out motor on the shredder when it was all done.
I have a couple of suggestions for government with respect to the handling of confidential information. There is a bit of a misconception here. I believe there are justifiable occasions when in order to protect the rights of individuals, or in the case of MPs those of a constituent, documents need to be destroyed so they cannot be used against the individuals. That I think is important.
When it comes to government accountability and bureaucracy I think just the opposite is true. There are two points that I think are very important. One is that accountability comes from knowing that the document will some day be made public.
Recently we had a talk with, for example, the Canadian Wheat Board. It is not subject to the Access to Information Act so it can do whatever it wants. Other than what it chooses to report in its reports, the rest is never available to the public and in particular to farmers who have the greatest interest in the Canadian Wheat Board.
Even though one can argue that there is a commercial value to secrecy at a certain stage, why can we not after five years, or even after ten years, say that everything has to be opened up? At that stage people would know what decisions were made on their behalf five years before.
This would very greatly affect the decisions being made by bureaucrats, by officials. They might say they can do something and no one will ever find out and it does not matter. However, if they know that some years down the road someone will find out, it may affect their decision and cause them to do what is right instead of what may not be right.
The second part of what we are talking about today is the destruction of documents that could be called upon later. I would like to add another feature. Anybody who is ordered by a superior to shred documents or otherwise destroy them should have the right to obtain the order in writing and to retain that document for his or her own protection for the future so that nobody can pass the buck afterward and say “I was simply following orders”, and then the person giving the orders saying “No, I never gave that order”.
In that way an individual, someone lower down in the hierarchy who did not make the decision, would still have protection. Thereby the person who actually gave the order would be held responsible because the document would be held in the safety of the person receiving the order who would be able to produce it if the matter became an issue later.
In general I would like to speak in favour of the bill. It is an important measure to provide accountability and to make sure things are done correctly on behalf of taxpayers and voters. The Canadian people would have confidence in their government because information would be available to them when they need it in order to provide the facts. This measure would provide for the safety of materials, preventing their destruction, so that evidence could be brought forward if needed.
In principle I support the bill and I also urge other members to do so.