Madam Speaker, the amendment has raised two fundamental issues of importance to parliament. First, it raises the issue of the right of members of parliament to introduce amendments that are important to them, whatever the agreements that might have been made among House leaders. The Chair has ruled on that question. It ruled the amendment to be in order.
There may well be disagreement about the extent or nature of the agreement among House leaders. If that is the case it is a commentary on the obligation of the government House leader to ensure that when he enters into an agreement with House leaders of other parties its implication is understood in the same way in all parts of the House.
Let us not forget that the amendment is about the right of parliament to make decisions on matters of fundamental public importance based on the fullest information possible. Parliament should not have to rush into decisions before the information is available for it to consider, information that is provided at public expense and by the law of the land.
As was made clear in the language of the amendment and the brief remarks of the hon. member for Calgary West, the amendment was introduced because the present situation is unacceptable. Parliament is required to make decisions before receiving and digesting the report required by law to be tabled in the House by the Chief Actuary of Canada.
If this were the only case in which the government had denied parliament access to the information it needed to decide, that would be one thing. However it is about a much larger principle. It is about the consistent and growing practice of the government to deny information about decisions that are essential not only to parliament but to the public of Canada.
The chief actuary reports to the House of Commons of Canada for a reason, and the reason is not to give a running commentary for historians to consider in years to come. It is to ensure parliamentarians who make decisions on public policy have the facts in hand.
The present situation allows the actuary's report to be tabled after decisions are taken. Decisions must be taken without the information in hand. This is not only perverse. It reflects the government's growing practice of trying to deny members of the House of Commons and citizens of the country the information they require to make major decisions.
It happens here with respect to the report of the Chief Actuary of Canada. It also occurs on a range of other questions. Everyone in the House is aware of the government's treatment of the information commissioner. When he seeks the information that is legitimately his, the Prime Minister of Canada intervenes in the courts. He uses the lawyers of the Government of Canada to try to prevent the information commissioner from exercising the rights given to him by the Parliament of Canada to look into the private books of the Prime Minister.
This indicates the elevation of the personal interest of the Prime Minister over the public interest of the country. It demonstrates the government's determination to withhold as much information as possible on as many subjects as possible from the people of Canada.
There are members in the House who have claimed to support the information commissioner. However the government has established a committee of public servants to make recommendations on how to tighten the rules of access to information even further and thereby make it more difficult for parliament and the people of Canada to have the facts upon which decisions can be based. The government has taken the same action with respect to the chief actuary that it has taken with respect to the officer whose role is to ensure access to information.
The instances go on and on. They are before the House today with respect to the extremely limited inquiry being carried out into the question of publicity and sponsorship contracts by the Government of Canada.
Earlier today we heard the President of the Treasury Board and the Minister of Public Works and Government Services say that there is a government-wide inquiry into this matter by the auditor general. That is absolutely false. That is not the case.
The powers of the auditor general are very explicitly limited to conduct an inquiry respecting sponsorship, respecting advertising, only into those agencies where she has the power under the law to conduct an audit. That is not government wide.
She does not have that power with respect to the so-called arm's length corporations, corporations that set up in effect for off the books accounting, a practice that became known in the private sector, to everyone's chagrin, not long ago with Enron. The auditor general cannot audit those matters so she cannot look at the expenditure or the potential patronage on publicity or on sponsorship programs entered into by any of those corporations, which include the millennium scholarship fund and a number of other agencies where the association with the Liberal Party of Canada is already too close.
There is a $7 billion pool of money that can be used for improper purposes by the government that specializes in improper purposes and it is beyond the range of inquiry of the auditor general. Yet the government pretends it is a government-wide inquiry, government wide except for $7 billion.
Worse than that, there is a series of crown corporations for which the auditor general is not the auditor. She is thus not empowered to conduct an inquiry into the abuse of sponsorship or advertising programs in those crown corporations. They include, among others, Canada Post. Who by the surest of happenstance is in charge of Canada Post? André Ouellet, a former government minister, someone who, when he was here, was known to be among the most skillful--