Mr. Speaker, I am happy to see so many of my colleagues here today. I will talk about the process of appointing an information commissioner.
We are going to support this appointment. I had the opportunity and indeed the pleasure to interview Mr. John Reid and I was quite impressed. I will go through a bit of the process. I hope to influence my colleagues on the other side that the process was not as harmful as they thought it could be.
During my lifetime I have probably interviewed 300 to 600 people. I lost count years ago. I have always seen a benefit in it. It is not just for bureaucracy but for business. The process of interviewing people is so common that it is uncommon not to do it. The selection process of any individual is common.
Mr. Speaker, I am sure you have done it in your past businesses. You have to know the type of individual you want in your business, in your company or in any job like that of information commissioner. You have to advertise as widely as you can to get the most prominent applicants. You have to look at all the applications and short list which does not come as a surprise to anybody over here. You have to interview, talk to the individuals you have short listed and make a selection. Then you check references to double check that your selection is right.
That process is not a strange process in the land but it is strange in the House. I do not want to degrade any conversation in terms of patronage appointments, but I really want to try to influence my colleagues that we have started a process which could actually work for officers of the House of Commons. Perhaps someday we could expand it. At the very least what should have occurred here is the process I was talking about.
Instead some time ago an individual was proposed by the government. I did not know that individual. I do not know how many of my other colleagues or the media actually need this function as much as the opposition and others do. Once the name was proposed there was quite a backlash. A lot of people said that the person was inappropriate for the job.
There are two problems with that. First, whoever thought this individual could be good enough for the job made a drastic error. Second, we managed to embarrass the individual. The individual had a job somewhere else and suddenly half the country turned on her because they did not like the fact that the individual could be an information commissioner. That process clearly does not work. It is very much like patronage.
Let us look at the process we went through further to that. Once that individual was basically turned down prior to even being interviewed or talked to, up came another name. Fortunately the two of my colleagues who put the name forward had a good person in mind, but that may not have been. We took a chance. The government took a chance and said let us bring this person before the government operations committee to be more or less interviewed by members of parliament.
If that person had been much like the first individual it could have been extremely embarrassing. It turned out the individual was in my opinion quite competent. When we went through the interview process I asked questions as I normally would with hundreds of other people: what are your skills, what are your abilities, what are your qualifications, where are you going to take this job, and how does it apply to society in general and to the people who are looking for information. Lo and behold this person not only had good answers to those questions but had excellent answers. John Reid had excellent answers to those questions.
What is the impact? Here is the impact I think we have just gone through. John Reid in my opinion was a very good candidate. I will never know in my own mind whether he is the best because I only had one to talk to.
I am not belittling in any way, shape or form this individual because I think he will do a very good job. However I think even John Reid would be one of the first to admit that he could go against anyone else in an interview and probably win the job. I would have guessed had we gone and asked him that he would probably have insisted. That is how much I thought of this individual and his character.
We have left an open door on the whole process. We will never know whether we got the very best, but we do know we have a very good individual.
There is another impact of this process. What about all other well qualified individuals in Canada today? There are well qualified executives who have been replaced and are out of their jobs because their companies closed down or for whatever reason. These are well qualified people who would like access to these types of jobs. They would at least like to have the opportunity to compete. They do not insist they get the job; they just want the opportunity to compete. What we are telling good people out there is that they do not have the opportunity to compete. I think that is wrong.
I see another impact. Perhaps this is the positive part. I think we have come a long way. I applaud the whole House for that. However, the next time a position for another officer of the House becomes vacant I ask my colleagues to go through the process of advertising, go through the process of knowing what kind of individual they want, go through the process of a short list and interviews, and then at the end of the exercise they will truly know they have the best person beyond any amount of reasonable doubt.
We will support Mr. John Reid and I congratulate him. I think he is a very good candidate. I also congratulate my colleagues in the NDP and the Progressive Conservative Party who had the ability to assess whether or not this individual was good and put his name forward.
We have to go the next step. Just one more time, I think the government will realize that this one did not hurt a bit. It only gave credibility to the process. The next time it should try it all the way. From the official opposition's point of view, if the government goes through that process there will be no tomfoolery. There will be no games played. It will be business and it will be fair and square and above board at all times.
My congratulations to Mr. John Reid. My congratulations to a process that is halfway there and that has yet to come.