Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to speak in the House of Commons especially in the evening. We are here tonight to talk about the Privy Council Office estimates for the coming year.
As the House knows, the Privy Council Office is one of the three central agencies of the federal government, along with the Prime Minister's Office and the Treasury Board Secretariat.
This debate comes at an important time, not only in the life of the country but in the life of this parliament. There is a growing unease among Canadians who since 1993 have been prepared to give the government and the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt in many areas. In light of the stories that we have been hearing and reading about for many weeks, there is a growing concern among the population about where is the beef, where is the vision that the government has for the future of the country.
We have seen in the past week two editorials in English language newspapers calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister. Gordon Robertson, one of the most respected public servants, was acknowledged earlier in the debates. He said that he believes the Prime Minister is about to join the ranks of other Liberal prime ministers who have outstayed their welcome in that important job and role as the prime minister of the nation.
The role of the Privy Council Office is to provide cabinet with non-partisan political advice to guide the decision making of the government. That is in stark contrast to the Prime Minister's Office which is on the partisan side of the ledger.
There is some concern of late about whether or not the Privy Council Office itself is straying over the line and into the role of partisan political advice. I do not know Alex Himelfarb who three weeks ago was appointed the Clerk of the Privy Council but he has been criticized in public quarters for taking an active role in the recent highly publicized dispute between the Prime Minister and the former finance minister.
Public administration scholar Gilles Paquet has concluded that the Prime Minister had politicized the position by asking the current Clerk of the Privy Council to directly intervene in a partisan dispute. Before that dispute broke, columnist and author Jeffrey Simpson had written in a column just over a month ago that Mr. Himelfarb is a favourite of the Prime Minister. It is widely reported, according to the columnist, that he had helped write the last red book which the Liberals campaigned on in the 2000 election, a rumour that if true would represent a breach of public service neutrality.
Under the government the relationship between the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister's Office has been the focus of a good deal of scrutiny. There was a hallmark study done by Donald Savoie who had spent considerable time at the centre of government in a previous administration. He concluded that the decision making authority had been highly concentrated in these two bodies to the detriment and possible obsolescence of others including parliament. Mr. Savoie wrote:
Cabinet has now joined Parliament as an institution being bypassed. Real political debate and decision making are increasingly elsewhere--in federal-provincial meetings of first ministers, on Team Canada flights...in the Prime Minister's Office, in the Privy Council Office, in the Department of Finance, and in international organizations and international summits. There is no indication that the one person who holds all the cards, the prime minister, and the central agencies that enable him to bring effective political authority to the centre are about to change things.
What I think Mr. Savoie was saying is that cabinet, like parliament, has become little more than a focus group that polling companies engage in from time to time to assess the temperature of the electorate on issues of the day.
Mr. Savoie is not alone in his concern in this area and neither is Mr. Simpson, because Mr. Paquet has said:
I'm surprised that the clerk of the privy council, who is serving the prime minister as his deputy minister, would be politicizing its position to such a degree that he would become involved in partisan debate with other ministers.
Mr. Paquet concluded that as an official of the Prime Minister's Office, it is Mr. Eddie Goldenberg in this case who is in the political job, while Mr. Himelfarb's role is to oversee the machinery of government.
What this points to is the public's right to know and a feeling that the right to know is under some siege and in some considerable difficulty. The information commissioner has just this day released a document which indicates that the federal government has taken advantage of the tragic events of September 11 by suppressing information and stopping independent inquiries that it deemed to be threatening to national security. Information Commissioner John Reid says that the government has given itself the power to remove classes of records deemed to be too sensitive from ever being accessed while halting all requests under review. He believes that the government has “quietly and firmly” shut the door on 19 years of public access to the records showing how ministers and staff are spending public funds.
Mr. Reid stated “The report emphasizes the fragility of the public's 'right to know' and” cautions “ that this right continues to be under siege” by parliament. Mr. Reid, I am pleased to note, takes issue with the much debated anti-terrorism law, which was known last year as Bill C-36. He refers to it as “a sweeping derogation from the right of access contained in the Access to Information Act”. I am pleased to hear that because it is confirmation of and one of the reasons why our party stood in opposition to Bill C-36 when it was being rushed through the House of Commons in the wake of September 11.
The report states:
Bill C-36 gives the Attorney-General the power to use a secrecy certificate to resist giving records to the Information Commissioner...The federal government has given itself the legal tools to stop in its tracks any independent review of denials of access under the Access to Information Act.
The commissioner said that we Canadians need to be wary of this government's continued attempts to prevent access to important information. He is critical of the intent of the government to reform the act by way of an insider review process. He stated:
The harsh attacks made this year by the government against the right to know heighten the concern that, no matter how well the task force does its work, no serious effort will be made by this government to modernize and strengthen the Act.
Those are very significant concerns. In addition to them, Mr. Reid is also saying that Canadians should ask themselves why the Prime Minister is so opposed to independent political auditing of his ethical standards and those of his fellow ministers. We find the answer in the report from the commissioner, who is an independent officer of this House and who has had to take the Prime Minister's Office to court. This is what he has to say in that report released today:
The fact remains, however, that there is a reluctance to write things down (for fear of access) and an oversensitivity to preserving the good “image” of a minister, the government or the department. It is a fact that the Clerk of the Privy Council insists on the broadest possible interpretation of the scope of cabinet secrecy. As well, the Prime Minister is personally committed to insulating his office and offices of ministers from the Act's coverage and from the Information Commissioner's investigative jurisdiction. These “hostilities” at the top stand in the way of the good-faith efforts, at more junior levels, to get on with a cultural change to open government.
Those are fairly important words from the Information Commissioner, who does report to the House of Commons and to parliament. It brings up the fact that the New Democratic Party, for three consecutive parliaments now, has been endeavouring to have the House pass ethics guidelines. We favour a range of legislative reforms that would introduce transparency and accountability into party and campaign financing and the conduct of legislators and members of the executive in their dealings with lobbyists.
I think this is a terribly significant time to be making these kinds of ethical guidelines, just because of what we have been reading and hearing about in the news media. I believe that the root of the problem is kickbacks or perhaps kick-forwards in terms of working with ad agencies and the like, either for past favours or for future favours.
One of the ways that this could be corrected very quickly would be to amend the Canada Elections Act to incorporate funding of party leadership campaigns under the disclosure requirement. A second way would be to develop and promote a system of state funded campaign financing, possibly modeled after the system in Quebec or Manitoba, which must be implemented to curb the influence that business and the wealthy have over the democratic electoral process.
I do not want to imply by referring twice in one speech to Jeffrey Simpson, the Globe and Mail columnist, that I am necessarily a big fan, but I did read with some interest a recent column that Mr. Simpson wrote in that newspaper regarding the changes to the election law that have occurred in Manitoba under the premiership of Gary Doer. In that column, Mr. Simpson indicated that Mr. Doer “first had to persuade his own party to abolish union and corporate contributions to political parties”. He managed to do that. He has brought that law into power. The provincial parties operating in the province of Manitoba must now rely only on contributions of up to $3,000 maximum from individuals, wrote Mr. Simpson, “a change that would be worthwhile for federal parties to adopt with modifications, instead of having their leaders fly around scooping up corporate (and union) cash” as the Prime Minister did recently in the province of Manitoba at a $400 a plate fundraising dinner.
I recall that René Lévesque, the first leader of the parti Quebecois in the province of Quebec, who governed for a number of years, was asked after he left office what the one piece of legislation was that he was most proud of. He responded very promptly that he was most proud of the guidelines his government brought in on spending for political parties and curbing and restricting donations from corporations and from trade unions. This is something that, as I have said before, but I do not think we can say it too often, would go a long way to restoring the faith of Canadians in what it is that governments are doing and what it is that political parties need to be doing.
Another area that could and should be looked at is the whole notion of whistleblower legislation. My colleague, the member for Winnipeg Centre, introduced a bill more than a year ago, an act to respect the protection of whistleblowers and to amend various acts. The bill proposes to protect members of the public service of Canada from retaliation for making in good faith allegations of wrongdoing and to provide a means for making such allegations in confidence so that it may be determined whether or not there is substance to the charges and to allow an opportunity to ferret out all of the facts. The legislation proposed by my colleague would have placed present practices under the House of Commons where they could be referred to a committee by the House.
Whistleblower laws are posited on the belief that employees should be able to disclose without reprisal to those in a position to investigate instances where there has been or there will likely be a criminal or a civil offence, a breach of legal obligation, miscarriage of justice, danger to public or individual health or safety, damage to the environment or a coverup of any of these matters.
The basic provisions would be protection of disclosures made in good faith to prescribed bodies. The bill would prohibit employers from discharging or otherwise discriminating against employees in retaliation to the disclosure to the employer, an independent body or government agency. It would protect employees and allow them to participate in formal government proceedings in connection with violations, including amnesty from any legal proceedings arising from their participation. Finally, it would establish an independent appeals procedure for any employee who believes that he or she has been discharged, demoted or otherwise discriminated against contrary to the provisions, and compensation could be awarded in cases where this has occurred.
This is not groundbreaking legislation. It would be in this country, but it certainly is not around the world. The British public interest disclosure act is considered by some to be the best example of comprehensive whistleblower legislation and makes provision for whistleblowers to be protected in the case of wider disclosures, which is mentioned in my colleague's bill.
My time is drawing to a close. I indicated that I was not here to be critical of Alex Himelfarb, the new Clerk of the Privy Council Office. Indeed, I noted with some interest that he addressed some 800 senior public servants yesterday in a speech here in Ottawa.
Among other things, Mr. Himelfarb said that the time was ripe for the bureaucracy to dish up new and exciting policy options like this government has “never seen before”. He is calling for an agenda in the fall that includes public service reform, health care reform, the long promised innovation agenda, a skills and learning blueprint, and something that will reach out to aboriginal, poor people and make certain that every child has a good start in life.
I think that if that were to happen it would be a good start, not only for Mr. Himelfarb, but for the House and mostly for the people of Canada.