Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague from New Brunswick Southwest for bringing forward the motion today. The parliamentary secretary to the government House leader is my colleague, as we share neighbouring ridings in Nova Scotia, and there is one thing he forgets. He forgets the fact that it is the taxpayers of Canada who sent us here and it is to the taxpayers of Canada that we should be answerable.
I want to touch on one thing very briefly. My hon. colleague from the Conservative Party mentioned members of parliament who cross the floor. I have always thought that people who did that were the scum of the political earth, first class political sycophants. If they do not have the courage of their convictions to face their voters in a byelection before they cross the floor, they have no right to sit in this hon. House of Commons. That is all I will say about that for the moment.
I would like to read to the House something that was in the Hill Times this week. Jean-Pierre Kingsley, the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, basically says:
I wouldn't use the word “corruption”, but you know the best measure against that is public knowledge--
That is what we are talking about. He is talking about making the following disclosure this week to the House affairs committee:
--important money is obviously being given and the public doesn't know about it--
This is in terms of leadership, electoral and political races in the country.
He states:
They don't know how much and they don't know who and if we go to the fundamental values in the Elections Act, one of them is transparency.
He says that the Canada Elections Act is supposed to call for “total transparency” and that is no longer the order of the day.
Jean-Pierre Kingsley, a well respected person in Canada, says that about the Canada Elections Act and what we are saying in the House of Commons is that this is what we are asking for in the production of papers. We want openness and transparency, but like what Mr. Kingsley said about the elections act, it is no longer the case. It is all secretive. The Liberals have a majority, so why not use the hammer and put away any kind of effort from the opposition? I would even suspect that a lot of their own backbenchers ask very pertinent questions on behalf of their constituents.
What do we get on top of all of this? We get the treasury board saying that ministers and their staff are exempt from freedom of information when it comes to their expense accounts. What utter nonsense. Just who do these people think they are? They are elected by the Canadian taxpayers. They have absolutely no right to hide that information from them. What they say about cabinet disclosure and cabinet confidentiality is utter nonsense. That kind of drivel originates from the south end of a northbound cow.
What is incredible is how many times on a Wednesday or after cabinet meetings that we have leaks greater than a sieve to the general public. Half of the Globe and Mail and the National Post know what goes on in cabinet meetings long before most of the Liberals do.
It is just utter nonsense when they hide behind cabinet confidentiality. The reality is that we are here because of the Canadian taxpayers. We owe it to them to get the information they ask us for.
I myself have had a production of papers motion because there is a mine site about to start operating in northern British Columbia. The fact is that this mine could cause great damage to salmon bearing rivers in that area. All we asked for was information on who said what to whom about this mine site. We want to know on behalf of Canadians whether all environmental regulations are being met. We want to know if all the criteria were met before the aspects of this mine were put in place. That is all we are asking for and we get the runaround every single time.
Another aspect of the runaround is the split procurement process for the Sea Kings. Have we ever heard greater nonsense?
That is why the minister of defence has absolutely no bearing any more when it comes to the military or Canadian people. They treat him as a joke. The fact is, he cannot even do the simple thing of convincing his cabinet colleagues to buy as simple a thing as a helicopter. When he tells us that they will be here at the end of 2005, there is no way that can happen. He is simply misleading the House, but mind you, he is very good at that.
Mr. Speaker, I know I have gone off the track and I will get back on. The whole aspect of it is that when someone asks for production of papers it should not take a year to try to get an answer.
Those of us in opposition and, I would suspect, a lot of backbenchers are asking information of the government every day. We need to have those answers back in a timely fashion. Forty-five days is too long but that should be adequate for the government with all its resources and all the people behind it to get those answers back to us in a timely fashion.
We can only surmise and assume that government members do not want to give that information, that they want to hide behind it. That is not democracy. That is not transparency. That just makes Canadians even more angry at politicians. When Canadians get more angry at politicians they in turn ignore the democratic electoral process and we all suffer because of it. That is unacceptable.
My colleague from New Brunswick Southwest asked a very simple question and he wanted some papers on it. That is all the government had to provide. I myself asked for some papers on a mine site in northern British Columbia. I do not know how that can be so difficult. Earlier this year another colleague, from the Alliance Party, asked for production of papers. What a hassle it was to get this stuff. I have absolutely no understanding of why, unless it is my own personal bias or belief in things, but the fact is that the government is continually hiding something.
When something is hidden from an opposition member of parliament or even from the backbench, it is actually being hidden from the Canadian people. That is unacceptable. We are slowly losing the values this country was built on. What is really amazing is that as a kid growing up, although I was a New Democrat my whole life, I always had assumed that the Liberal Party would be the one that would be the most honest, the most open, the most transparent.