Precisely. A member on the opposite side says we do not need access. Then why are the audits not available to us if we do not need access to information? The truth of the matter is that the government is withholding this information. Why?
The member for Mississauga South claims that the government was ensuring its credibility, its integrity and its accountability. He did not use the word transparency because he could not. If this is true, then why do we have to go through the access to information process to get audits that are supposed to be available without an access request?
It is because the government is hiding information and one has to ask why. It is to control the timing of the release of the information. The government wants to withhold this information until the summer recess when we are not sitting here and cannot draw the public's attention to the mismanagement of government departments. Or perhaps it is withholding this information until after the next federal election so the Liberal members do not have to hold themselves accountable to the electorate during that election. The government is controlling the timing by refusing to release these audit documents.
Most important is that the government is breaking its own policies. It is breaking the policies and the established process of releasing government audits. It is the government that is to rule under the law but it seems to have no hesitation to break it whenever it is appropriate to do so.
The member for Mississauga South commented that it was information that came up, that perhaps it was not an audit at all that raised this concern in the Department of Human Resources Development. He also said that it was one audit.
It is not one audit. Canadians are smart enough to know that it is not one audit we are talking about. It is a number of audits, and it is a number of audits that we cannot get our hands on. And it is not just one department. A number of departments other than human resources development hand out grants and subsidies to individuals and corporations in this country. It is their audits as well.
Our job in opposition is to hold the government accountable for spending the good hardearned tax dollars of the Canadian public. The government does not seem to be responsible or really care whether it is held accountable or whether the integrity of government is protected.
We in opposition feel that it is important for the government to share information. Government departments should be available to the public for scrutiny. It is very important that a government that places so much control and power with the executive branch show itself to be transparent so the Canadian public can have some degree of confidence that the government is doing what is in the best interests of the Canadian population.
Everything we have seen in the past three months in the House would indicate a number of things, that the government is contemptuous of the Canadian taxpayer, the government has no intention of being transparent and its integrity is in question. The government has to decide whether it is going to continue down the path of withholding and controlling information or whether it is going to offer to the Canadian public information so it can be held to account for how it spends the tax dollars that are provided to it to provide programming for Canadians.
I ask the government members if they intend to uphold the laws of the land or if they feel they are above the laws of the land.