Mr. Speaker, as my hon. colleague from Calgary Southeast indicated, I will be speaking to certain aspects of the bill. One aspect on which I will focus is the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the fact that it is retroactively being exempted from large sections of the Financial Administration Act.
The Financial Administration Act is a very thick document that governs and dictates how the government manages its internal finances. A large number of agencies, boards and so on must conform to the Financial Administration Act to ensure their finances are handled appropriately. Why would they not be? However this clause would exempt the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board from the FAA.
Also it is backdated to December 31, 1998. I understand from the government it is the old housekeeping rule that somewhere along the line it was originally exempt from the Financial Administration Act. When somebody was doing some drafting of another piece of legislation they inadvertently omitted to keep the exemption there, but it slipped back in, that they were subject to it.
We know there is a fundamental principle that legislation cannot be backdated. It is never retroactive. Why is it in this case? If we go to some particular piece of legislation and read some fine arcane little rule, it says that where the government makes a mistake it can backdate it if it so desires. Do we live in a real democratic country or do we not? That is what it is coming to.
As I mentioned earlier, when we were discussing Bill C-22 and the $125 grant to all Canadians who qualified for the GST tax credit, I questioned the legality of the information being taken from the Income Tax Act. The act guarantees the confidentiality of income tax returns. The government dipped into it just so it could send out cheques for $125. The Income Tax Act does not give the government the legal authority to get the information.
Here again we are having legislation backdated a couple or three years just because somebody did not do their homework properly or inadvertently made a mistake. The net result is that the Liberals are imposing it in the House. They will use their majority. They will bring out the whip. They will lash people into submission, to say this is good stuff. In a democratic country it is not good stuff when they have to backdate legislation. It cannot be.
What is the government actually doing with the backdating of legislation? It is exempting the board from being examined by the Auditor General of Canada, the watchdog of Canadians. What is the AG being prevented from examining? He is being prevented from looking at the $40 billion or more of money Canadians have set aside for their retirement. It is being held in trust by the government and being managed by the particular board. The auditor general cannot, by virtue of the legislation, go in there to take a look and assure Canadians that all is well. The government does not want that. It does not want these kind of questions to be asked.
I say as a Canadian that the people in my riding of St. Albert, and I am sure I speak for all Canadians, would like to know that the pension plan is being managed properly, securely, safely, prudently and so on. They will never know that. They will never be allowed to ask that question because the auditor general will never be allowed to ask that question by virtue of clause 6 in Bill C-17. It is absolutely despicable. Therefore I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following therefor:
“Bill C-17, an act to amend the Budget Implementation Act, 1997 and the Financial Administration Act, be not now read a third time, but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Finance for the purpose of reconsidering clause 6 and to consider the desirability of hearing from the Auditor General relating to his concern about the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board”.