moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the parliament and crown agencies should be subject to scrutiny under the Access to Information Act.
Madam Speaker, I rise today to propose this very straightforward and simple motion. It is not votable but I believe that does not detract from the importance of this subject.
Since I have come to this place I have put forward several bills on access to information. I have been told by several ministers that it is a matter of a very short time and there will be some major reforms to the Access to Information Act.
In doing the research for my motion today I found a number of agencies that are not subject to access to information. For the benefit of the House it is fair to note that all new crown corporations being created are not subject to access to information.
This is not the first time I have spoken on this subject and I assume it probably will not be the last. I will continue to put forward private members' motions which try to address this problem.
Five times in the past six years individual members of the House have put forward motions which tried to address different parts of the deficiencies of the current legislation. My caucus colleagues from Wild Rose and Dauphin—Swan River, just to name a couple, have also put forward motions on this subject.
It is well known that on the opposition side of the House there are a great many people who feel the current legislation needs to be improved. In my case this motion simply carries on with some of the other areas I have identified as problems.
In 1982 the Access to Information Act was passed and the following year it was given royal assent. Some 17 years ago that piece of legislation was brought forward. At that time it was based on “the principle that government information should be available to the public”. It is a very straightforward and simple premise with which most Canadians and most parliamentarians hopefully would agree.
It is a very important principle and it is very important that we do not forget it. I do not think any one in opposition in the House could put up much of an argument in opposition to access to information. I do not think anyone in the House would not basically agree with an open style of government.
We have had many political documents over the course of the years which have bragged about the open style of government that was coming. Those who might be tempted to reject this kind of principle would probably be running the risk of a great deal of public rebuke in this regard.
All of this should be a non-partisan issue. The fact that we are spending taxpayers money and doing things in this place should be open totally to the scrutiny of people who pay the bills.
In a democracy such as ours government accountability is essential to the preservation of our freedoms and to the protection of the public interest as defined in many different ways.
Some might ask why this issue is so important and why I should be spending so much time and effort in questioning access to information. After all we have an information commissioner and the bureaucracy in place. Most Canadians probably assume that the main people who benefit are parliamentarians and journalists. That is not true. A growing number of Canadians are using access to information. It is certainly true that the media and parliamentarians use it as much as possible, but using this act can force the government to reveal information which parliament and other places cannot get hold of.
Members of the House, regardless of on which side of the aisle they sit, can use the act to discover, to unearth or to reveal what the government and the bureaucracy are doing behind the scenes.
In a recent speech the information commissioner noted that members of parliament are increasingly relying upon the current access law to help them with their responsibilities and parliamentary duties.
That seems to me perfectly understandable as the House is overwhelmed by the amount of business that it must conduct. The ability of its members to fulfil their duty to scrutinize legislation requires new tools. Debate and questions are simply no longer adequate.
Over the past 17 years access to information has become a crucial part of our democratic system. It has become an essential means of guaranteeing government accountability. A recent report released by Queen's University school of political studies has noted the tremendous increase in the requests targeting government ministries and agencies.
I do not want to list all these results but let me list a few examples. According to this study, between 1993 and 1998 the number of access requests directed at Health Canada increased by 72%; at national defence, by 74%; and at correctional service, by 79%.
These requests are not the work of crackpots who are simply trying to make the public service look bad. They do not represent a concerted effort to reveal dirt about government officials, corruption and such things. Instead the vast increase in requests simply reflects the growing complexity of government and the growing awareness among Canadians of the breadth and range of ongoing government activities.
The concept of ministerial accountability, a concept the government seems not always to like, has been supplemented by the Access to Information Act. What question period and ministerial inquiries cannot reveal might very well be discovered through an access to information request. That is an important addition to the system of government.
Recently on a television program a statement was made that Canada had one of the most secretive democracies in the world. I do not believe that comment should be used in a country like Canada and the reform of the Access to Information Act therefore becomes even more important.
Sir Francis Bacon once said that knowledge itself was power. That may be an old adage but not all wisdom is new wisdom. Access to information, to knowledge about government activities, is a means of preventing too great a concentration of power in the hands of anonymous and unaccountable public servants. It also means devolving power back to those from whom it is derived, the common people.
The Access to Information Act is currently inadequate. It does not meet the standards of open government which the Canadian people expect and deserve. The 1982 Access to Information Act states that “necessary exceptions to the right of access should be limited and specific”. This seems to be a relatively straightforward aim of this act.
I invite all hon. members to take time to read through the legislation to refresh their memories. Without going into detail, the current legislation permits exceptions to access in three basic areas: first, where national security might be threatened by the release of information; second, where the fairness of a judicial process might be prejudiced; and, third, where the release of information might reveal trade secrets or place Canadian business in an unfair situation vis-à-vis foreign firms.
These seem to be very reasonable restrictions. I think all of us would agree with them. They cannot be used as an argument against changing the access to information for crown corporations. There is an existing appeal process should someone disagree with the assessment by a department or government agency that access must be denied.
I could quote a number of legal representations but I am not a lawyer by training so I will forgo that. The 1984 decision of the federal court seems to make crystal clear how this should work and how exceptions and exemptions should be handled.
The people have a right to know and those who would deny it must explain themselves before the most appropriate authority. In other words, open government is more than a privilege. It is a basic principle of our political system in a modern Canada going into the 21st century.
This principle is not being properly respected by those whose duty it is to uphold it. According to one report, only about one-half of the 12,000 access to information requests filed annually are replied to within the statutory time limit of 30 days. This tardiness increases when the request comes from an opposition member of the House, and again statistics back that up.
I personally know that government departments seek to discover the identity of many of the people who file requests. That is also a violation of the existing law. I believe some of the ministers responsible for that should be held accountable in the House.
A few moments ago I cited some figures from a very recent Queen's University study on access to information. I will now cite others.
According to the study, the number of full disclosure responses provided by government ministries and agencies has shown an alarming decline in recent years. Despite all the controversy surrounding it and the current minister's micromanaging of access to information requests, the Department of National Defence has seen a decline of only 8.8% in full disclosures between 1993 and 1998. A decline in meeting access requests is not good, but 9% is not at all bad when compared with the worst offenders.
In the same period the privy council saw a decline of 40% in its disclosures. The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency saw a decline of 39.4% and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, a decline of 22%. All these are declines in willingness to respond to access claims. At a time when we are asking for more accountability and more open government, obviously none of these should be declining in terms of responses to access to information claims.
The information commissioner recently stated that “many public servants have simply decided that when it comes to the access law illegal behaviour is the norm”. Make no mistake, refusing access is quite clearly against the spirit and the letter of the law of the land.
Perhaps some day we will learn why the Minister of National Defence needs to supervise the response to each access to information request of his department. He personally must approve every one of them that comes into his office before access is given. Does he think we will find out that the troops are not combat capable? Does he think that the Canadian people might be shocked at the information about the decline that has occurred?
I suppose the wheat board is one thing I will not have time to talk about, but many of my constituents are upset that they, the shareholders, cannot have access to the board, the salaries and the information. They would be happy to get it even from last year or the year before.
A lot of reforms are needed to the Access to Information Act. Canadians are asking for them and I do not understand why the government has not brought forward the reforms it promised in 1994.