Mr. Speaker, the member has made an important point that deserves clarification. The criminal code as indicated is but one aspect. It is about liability. It is about the use of the civil code to pierce the corporate veil.
If the chain of evidence is unbroken and if there is clear indication that safety provisions have been ignored and a person has been placed in a situation where there is real danger that was avoidable, directors and those in managerial positions should face a degree of accountability. If a stream of evidence pointed directly to knowledge that was ignored, if a dangerous situation could have been remedied and a decision very often for financial reasons led the person to inaction, there should definitely be a degree of accountability. All these evidentiary matters would be examined by a court with the benefit of the presumption of innocence and all the protections that exist.
What other types of legislative initiatives can we look at? We could look at coal mine regulations which are within federal purview. Occupational health and safety is another area that we could look at. Other federal labour codes that exist in the country could be looked at. The difficulty with much of this is provincial standards and the provincial approach to safety in the workplace. It is very much in the hands of the provinces to regulate.
We need federal statutes and legislation that encourage accountability, that encourage liability, and that will bring about a sense that there will be an accounting and deterrence and denunciation of irresponsible behaviour by those who not only in the practical sense may have created a dangerous situation but those who knew of it.
That is what I mean when I talk about attitudes changing. For years it has been assumed that those in the upper echelon in the business world, those who in many instances drive businesses to move ahead at breakneck pace, will not be held accountable, that they will somehow be able to step back and say “I just make business decisions”. Business decisions affect lives, and business decisions, if they are driven only by profit, certainly create danger. That is what we learned at Westray, just as political decisions can very much create danger.
If this is truly to be about accountability and justice, that means many things to many people. Justice very much talks about fairness. It talks about accountability. It talks about openness. That is what we should all be striving for. That is what we can do by changing things in the legislative scheme in parliament.