Madam Speaker, I am dealing directly, and I have been consistently through my remarks, with the fundamental principle of the amendment before the House. It is an amendment that is designed specifically to ensure that when parliament makes decisions on matters relating to he Canada pension plan it is able to do that having in hand the report of the Chief Actuary of Canada. The present practice denies us that information.
The amendment is about access to information. The reason the amendment is so very important and why we would support it is precisely that it has become a practice of the government on issue after issue, as my friend from Yukon has indicated and he knows as well as I do that the list is long and it is lengthening of areas in which the government tries to shut out the public. I could go on much longer than my time allows to identify those instances.
The point is that in a democracy we need information to decide. The House of Commons which is at the heart of our democracy particularly needs good, current information to make decisions. It needs the information before the decisions are to be made.
Under the present practice, addressed directly by this amendment, it is clear that the information does not come until after the decisions are made. That is wrong and it should be changed. The amendment seeks to change that but it is a much larger practice. The government consistently tries to move forward and it keeps the public and parliament, those who should be informed in a democracy, those instruments of democracy in the dark. That is the relevance of the amendment and the reason I am addressing it so significantly.
I do want to return to the other troubling instance of the practice of holding information back from bodies that have to make decisions.
I was speaking about the inability under the law now of the auditor general to conduct an investigation into the $7 billion that is held right now by the arm's length foundations and the inability of the auditor general to look at agencies like Canada Post which, although we do not know and will not know until we see the facts, may well be abusing its authority and entering into the kinds of contracts with Groupaction or with others that have caused such a furor here. That is why we need to see the facts. The RCMP cannot look into those activities. As well, no committee of the House can. Right now the auditor general is precluded from looking into those by the legislation that guides her decision.
However, that legislation under section 11 also vests in the Government of Canada the capacity to extend the right of audit of the auditor general to those arm's length foundations and to each of the crown corporations where patronage might now be practised. It would take a simple decision by the Government of Canada to say that the auditor general under section 11 has that authority. Once she is given that authority, as night follows day, she then also has the authority to take her investigation into potential patronage and into the activities of sponsorship and publicity into the areas where she is given the capacity to conduct an audit by the government. However, that is up to the government and it knows that.
The President of the Treasury Board today gave me an answer, and I want to be careful of my parliamentary language, designed to mislead. It was successful in its design. However, there is not a government-wide inquiry into this matter.
On the principle here today, we cannot make decisions on Canada pension plan matters based upon the report of the Chief Actuary of Canada if we are asked to make the decisions before we receive the report. It is very simple. Any child in grade school would understand that. The government understands it.
This should not be regarded as a mistake. This is a practice. The government wants parliament to make decisions without adequate information because it knows that information empowers and the absence of information enfeebles. What it wants is a parliament and a public that knows as little as possible about public business.
It is a characteristic of the government and it is a characteristic that is clear in the legislation before us now. It is a characteristic that would be changed if the motion proposed by my colleague from Calgary West were to be supported, which is why we will support the amendment when it comes to a vote today.