Madam Speaker, when we talk about access to information what we are really talking about in the final analysis is the good of the general public but very specifically the need for the watchdogs of government, parliamentarians and the media to be able to have the instruments and the tools to scrutinize government to make sure it is honest and efficient.
Certainly that is the role of both backbench government MPs and opposition MPs. We need good information. We have to be able to get that information from government so we can do our job.
It is the same with the media. The media must have the tools of good freedom of information legislation in order to do its job for all Canadians and for parliament.
In the context of the media I cannot tell of my surprise when after the member for Red Deer submitted his earlier bill, Bill C-216 that would do the same thing, open up crown corporations, I received a letter in November 1997 from the chief operating officer of the CBC, in which the chief operating officer appealed to me as a member of parliament—and I imagine this letter went to every other member of parliament—to resist Bill C-216 because it threatened the independence of the CBC under the Broadcasting Act and it threatened journalistic integrity and it threatened the CBC's competitive position. The CBC, we understand, is a billion dollar plus crown agency operating primarily on government funds, so I was surprised by that.
As a former journalist I fired a letter back very quickly in which I said to the chief operating officer of the CBC that as a former journalist I knew that his concerns were unwarranted and that in fact I myself had a private member's bill, Bill C-264, which put in enhanced protections to corporations and organizations like parliamentarians and the CBC in the sense that Privacy Act considerations would prevent any damage to journalistic integrity, and that he had no fear of losing the independence in the Broadcasting Act simply because the CBC would be required to disclose its administrative procedures.
There is a huge issue here. As I pointed out to the chief operating officer of the CBC, the issue here is that it is the one organization in the country that is completely outside any kind of government scrutiny even though it gets money from the government. We cannot see any of the salaries in the CBC, as I explained to the chief operating officer. We cannot see any mismanagement in the CBC, as I explained to the chief operating officer. We cannot even see nepotism in the CBC.
We as parliamentarians are subject to all kinds of scrutiny. When we undertake patronage, which is the source of all kinds of controversy in the country and which the opposition is constantly attacking the government on, we are talking about a form of nepotism that is at least public. In the CBC we can see none of that.
I wrote him back and got a letter back from him again. He simply said that he was sorry, that the CBC's administrative procedures must remain secret because exposing CBC records under the access rules for administrative purposes would in fact expose all CBC records whether gathered for administrative, creative, journalistic or programming purposes. That is not true, not true at all.
I wrote to Peter Mansbridge, one of the top journalists in this country. In my letter I said “Peter, as a journalist would you disclose your salary as an example to the rest of the CBC to show that you as a journalist believe in the principles of access to information”. He wrote me back a letter in which he said “Given the kind of scrutiny, both real and imagined, that public figures are faced with in this country, there are few things that remain private. In my case I am fortunate that my employer chooses to at least keep my salary details private”. And so it goes. The top journalist in the country, while he demands transparency and accountability of parliamentarians, is not prepared to submit to it himself.
When the journalism community is not prepared to have the same kind of transparency it demands and asks of government, then it should not criticize those bureaucrats who are afraid of the type of legislation we all know is very necessary in this country for the efficiency and honesty of this country. I say to the member for Red Deer, way to go.