Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Calgary Centre for his remarks on this particular issue and the amendment. It gives me the opportunity to speak to the issue of access to information as opposed to the more limited and narrow application of the auditor general's right to audit foundations.
This gives me an opportunity to report that the task force on access to information that was struck by treasury board and the Department of Justice two years ago presented its report not a week ago. One of the major features of that report was a recommendation that would bring under the Access to Information Act the foundations and crown corporations alluded to by my colleague, the member for Calgary Centre.
I would submit to him that what we really ought to be doing in this parliament is urging the government to act on that particular recommendation in the task force report, which I suggest to him would have far more sweeping impact on government accountability and the accountability of crown corporations and arm's length agencies than having the auditor general have the right to review those agencies.
I point out to him, in the Groupaction sponsorship files case, a government audit was done on the sponsorship files in 2000 which disclosed all the problems. One of the problems it disclosed was the fact that for years contracts were being let and agreements were being entered into for which there was no documentation. One of the problems for the auditor general, and one of the problems for any police investigation that might be looking into this file, is that one cannot determine what actually occurred because the documents do not exist.
I suggest that a revised Access to Information Act that made sure all those documents that pertained to contracting out, in the sense that was done for the sponsorship program, should have been collected and put on the web so that any citizen, and even more importantly, any fellow colleagues or bureaucrats in the department of public works or any other agency would be able to look into that particular file of the sponsorship contracts. It would have been discovered instantly that the documents that should be created were not being created.
In other words, if we had a reformed Access to Information Act that guaranteed that this type of document when generated is to be publicly available. And if we insisted on a culture in the bureaucracy, and I think the bureaucracy is headed this way in any event, and I should say the government which includes the political government as well, we should be taking advantage of electronic access so this type of document would be readily available to all.
If that had been the system, we would not have had the problems that we have encountered now in the sponsorship file. We are all distressed by that because it is a reflection on the business of the bureaucracy in which Canadians have an enormous trust and any failure, of course, may erode the confidence Canadians have in what I feel is one of the best bureaucracies in the world.
So I submit to you, Madam Speaker, and through you to the member for Calgary Centre, although I certainly heard him on the suggestion about the auditor general but audits are only spot checks. What we really have to have is a system whereby there is always in place the kind of transparency that enables all Canadians and parliamentarians and the media to do their jobs to make sure that all areas of government are being managed in a way appropriate to the interests of all Canadians.