Madam Speaker, I similarly am pleased to add but a few remarks to the motion put forward by my hon. colleague from Red Deer.
It is truly not a new debate certainly in this House. I submit that it is a very admirable attempt to address an issue that has become of increasing concern to parliament. I know that my hon. colleague personally has been very persevering on this issue.
The motion before us is whether to make parliament and crown agencies subject to scrutiny under the Access to Information Act. The Freedom of Information Act itself and the laws are built around the basic principle “that government information ought to be publicly available whenever possible”. This comes from the secretary of state in 1977 on the issue when the Freedom of Information Act was first enacted.
This legislation is aimed at helping to keep government itself honest and certainly to bring about greater accountability. I think we can all agree that this should be entrenched and wherever possible there should be transparency. It is something I believe that the public is now expecting and further to that, demanding of parliamentarians. There is a growing degree of frustration among members of parliament in this session and certainly the public as well that this is not the case. The current legislation is not achieving that end.
Private sector restructuring has affected current freedom of information laws. Currently the freedom of information laws do give citizens, including obviously members of this House and both provincial and federal members, the right to obtain government held records, except in certain cases where it is in the public interest to maintain some secrecy.
The federal government's freedom of information law is known as the Access to Information Act. However, there are times when that information is not accessible, so there is a bit of an anomaly there.
This is consistent I suppose with the back and forth debate that went on when this type of legislation was first enacted, the balance that had to be struck, and it is a proper word to be used. It was used by the parliamentary secretary in her remarks. There is obviously a need to balance the right to protect an individual's privacy or a business's privacy in some instances versus the general public's right to know.
I would submit that cutbacks to the public service have caused an increasing delay in government processing of freedom of information requests. The federal information commissioner has made remarks along these lines calling this a festering silent scandal.
I would submit that further to that, this is consistent with some of the results that we have seen coming from the government, that there is a delay. Delay can be the deadliest form of denial when there is a need for information. A certain policy approach is developing that seems to grind citizens down and perhaps grind even individual members of parliament down in their attempts to find out information from the government.
The government has obviously taken the position that it has to be accountable fiscally. No one denies that and certainly the attempt to achieve this result is going to result in cuts. I think these cuts account for much of the delay that happens within the federal government. However, experimenting with new methods of delivering public services, privatization of former government controlled agencies, has been a necessary means to the desired end of that fiscal responsibility, but there is a risk of efficiency and risk of delay in taking this approach.
All governments are constantly searching for ways to transfer functions out of government departments and back into the private sector. Contracting out on the delivery of public services has obvious problems as it relates to freedom of information requests. I suggest that there is also a creation of mistrust if the contracting out to these private sector companies results in the government's ability to say that it can no longer give this information because it is out of the government's hands.
Activities that are being delegated to industry run organizations that then become exempt from freedom of information laws are of a real concern. One example is Nav Canada which provides traffic control services. Like politics, private industries are very competitive and there are occasions when they will fiercely guard certain trade secrets. Bids for government contracts would be a perfect example.
Crown corporations, single purpose agencies that are still wholly owned by the government have been created to allow for these formerly government controlled industries to operate. In some cases they operate free from access to information requests even when technically they are covered by the freedom of information laws, the thought being that compliance could decline as the traditional public service is fragmented. This would leave them free, one would suppose, from government influence yet they are still being funded by the Canadian taxpayer. That element of taxpayer support should outweigh the government's ability to hide behind the supposed arm's length relationship they have with the government.
There we are on the horns of the dilemma. There is a need for the public to know, certainly on most occasions, but the government has obviously distanced itself from this obligation by saying it is a private sector company. The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation are other examples of where the government has moved toward privatization of a formerly publicly run agency.
Government services are run like private industries on many occasions. Efficiency has improved as a result when the private sector enters in. Still there is this competing issue of the bottom line fiscally versus the need to be accountable in the public sector. This is the case in private industry as well. There are occasions when the government has to step in and demand information. When there are issues of environmental concern and certainly when there are potential Criminal Code violations, then the government has to actively pursue even private sector companies.
As governments attempt to find new non-tax revenues, they may also undermine access rights. An example is that several governments may sell information and this information would then be exempt from freedom of information laws regardless of the price. Information protected for a price undermines equal access to government information.
Presently the Access to Information Act appears to be something the government itself is prepared to look at in terms of possible amendments. There is certainly a great deal of merit in doing that when there is increasing demand from the public that we as parliamentarians be more accountable and more open in that regard.
There is a quotation that knowledge is power, but further to that, a little bit of knowledge is sometimes dangerous. When it comes to making an important decision, not having the full picture is something the public and members of parliament sometimes wrestle with when it comes to an access demand. The balance that must be struck is something we must constantly strive for.
Should parliament itself be subject to the scrutiny of access to information? Obviously it is public money that is paying the salaries of individual members of parliament and I would suggest there is already a great deal of public scrutiny toward members of parliament. I would also suggest there is a higher degree of accountability on the part of the government to meet that obligation. There is a higher degree of accountability when it comes to disclosing decisions that not all members of parliament have participated in.
With access to information, I would suggest the Canadian public do have a certain degree of a right to know. There are obviously occasions which have been mentioned previously, national security, trade secrets, the concerns that individual constituents might have about access to information requests that would affect them, those considerations are always going to be kept in mind by the information commissioner himself.
The information commissioner should have the authority to review reasonableness for fee schedules for freedom of information requests. There should also be a release if that price continues to be unreasonable. There should be a release of records where citizens' complaints are justified. Monitoring of the system as a whole is something I believe would be a very worthwhile exercise.
I personally support the initiative of the hon. member. I believe there is a huge public appetite for this type of exercise to occur. If it happens in some small way, we might contribute to the restoration of a degree of public confidence in parliament and politics generally as an honourable profession.