Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to my colleague's Motion No. 20. My colleague from New Brunswick Southwest moved the motion in reaction to a situation he found himself in where he had put a question on the order paper that the government failed to answer over a period of a year. That frustration has brought it to the point where it is now a debatable motion before the House.
The concern of my hon. colleague and all of us is that we are here representing the people of Canada to hold the government accountable. That is our job in opposition. It is to ensure that when the government makes decisions it is making the best decisions on behalf of Canadians.
The only way that a person can evaluate whether or not the government is doing its job, whether it is doing the best it can for Canadians, is to have access to information. When the opposition asks for information from the government and is denied that information it prohibits us from doing that which we are here to do and that is to ensure that all the facts are on the table, that all the information is out there for perusal, so that we can question the government on how it interpreted information and how it reached the decisions it did.
We in opposition are expressing great concern through the motion. We are trying to get the government members to understand that if parliament is to continue to hold the respect of Canadians we must operate in a manner that earns that respect.
I was confronted this week in the transportation committee with regard to the report that the minister of government services lost. I will not say that the minister lost it. The department lost a report. There was some concern that a good deal of money, half a million dollars, had been spent by government on behalf of Canadian taxpayers to have this report written. After the expenditure of these dollars, lo and behold, this report was not to be seen. One has to question how the government made the decision to hire the company to write the report.
Groupaction was the company that was contracted to write the report for the government. The contract was to propose ways to increase the federal government's visibility and was reviewing a number of programs the government was involved in.
In committee we asked the government representative who this company was, how it got the contract and what happened to the report that was the result of the work that it supposedly did. We were told that there were nine companies that were authorized by the Government of Canada to do this work.
Canada is a pretty large nation and I am sure there are quite a few companies that could do the kind of work that this company was asked to do. We asked for information about how the government picks nine companies from all of those across the country to do the work. We were told that it was the practice of government to preselect and short list companies that will do contract work for the government, not only in this department but in other departments as well.
Keeping that in mind, that it is a matter of practice for the government to short list or preselect companies that qualify to apply for these government contracts, we asked a few more questions.
It came to light, albeit through the media and the questions they were asking and the work they were doing, that three of the pre-selected companies were somewhat related to each other out of these nine. We are not talking about nine unrelated companies. We are talking about maybe six or seven unrelated companies. Three of them having the same president.
When there is some concern expressed about one of these pre-selected companies out of the nine, which really is down to six, who got the contract and then found itself giving money back to the government, it is not unrealistic for the opposition to say that something does not seem quite right. We need to see copies of the report and of the documentation around the report, and furthermore we would like to see some evidence on what criteria the government authored or pre-approved these nine companies. What kind of clearance, security or investigation went on to see whether or not these companies were related to one another?
It is because of incidents like this where Canadian taxpayers pay half a million for a report that gets lost, that was done in questionable circumstances by companies that were pre-selected by the government and that gave money back to the government, that the opposition must have access to documentation and to those things upon which government makes its decision.
If we do not have access to information, how is it possible for the opposition, those of us on this side of the floor, to do our jobs on behalf of Canadians? That is our role. In order for us to be able to do that job we need access to information.
If that was not bad enough, I just read something today, again in the media, where DND will not release the names of visitors or the money spent on them because of their rights to privacy. We heard that Treasury Board did not want to release the expense accounts of ministers because of rights of privacy. It is pretty hard to hold ministers and the Department of National Defence to account as to where tax dollars are being spent if that information is withheld from those people who are here to hold the government to account.
It is interesting that the government does not see the necessity of this function of parliament. Parliament is here, and the opposition is here, to check and question where the government is spending tax dollars. That is why we have estimates and a budget. That is why we have that process. However if parliament is not allowed to have the information where we can question the estimates then we are being denied the facility of doing our jobs.
The PC/DR coalition introduced a new concept in relation to the whole national security issue and anti-terrorism legislation that has been discussed over the last couple of months. In coming up with how we felt government should do business differently and how it should co-ordinate functions and create a new ministry, we recognized the need for a parliamentary committee to be established so that we would have access to highly sensitive information.
The reason we did that was because we saw the need to have parliament holding the government accountable. The only way we can do that is by access to information. We saw the need even in the highly secure areas of anti-terrorism and national security to have a parliamentary committee
It is not like it is not done anywhere else. In the United States information is shared and shared widely so that the opposition can do the job it is elected to do, that is, hold the government accountable.
I would like the government to recognize that and support the motion.