Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for Prince George—Bulkley Valley for his intervention and for his recent remarks.
As I think about this bill, I remember, when I was the deputy critic for industry with responsibility for the Canadian Tourism Commission, an instance that took place over a period of time where I wanted to have a meeting with the director of the commission. This was not as simple a matter as I had thought it would be. We had been told how open it was and how they were looking for opportunities to discuss the business of the commission with various people.
I had a meeting in British Columbia with some of the tourism people and wanted to take some of the information and discuss it with the director. It took a long time for this meeting to be arranged. The director was busy in town or out of town. One day we finally made an appointment. It was not in the near future, but after some time passed and I was preparing for the meeting, guess what, I got a phone call saying “I'm sorry, the appointment has been cancelled.
I began to explore the reasons why. I was told that I could have no meetings with members of the commission without the minister's approval. I took this directly to the Minister of Industry and, to his credit, he said that he would never stop me from doing that. Regardless, in his name, I never did have a meeting with the director of the commission.
This, in my mind, brings up the question of accountability. The Canadian Tourism Commission is accountable to the minister and accountable through the minister to parliament. Yet a parliamentarian, myself, the deputy critic responsible for this commission in my party, wanting to represent the constituents of British Columbia to the commission, was not able to have a meeting.
I am asking myself, with this further separation, this inch and a half arm's length that has been created between the commission and the government, how much more opportunity is there for a lack of accountability by the new crown corporation and members of parliament and the citizens of Canada who are vitally concerned about this issue.
I want to ask the member what his concerns are. Does he recognize some of the dangers I am alluding to? Could comment on them?