Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Vegreville—Wainwright.
I would like to compliment the President of the Treasury Board on the fact that he was open-minded enough to allow committee members to effect changes to this piece of legislation that they felt needed a lot of improvement. I appreciate the fact that he was able to consider the changes that we put forth and was open-minded enough to recognize that those changes had to be put into effect.
I also think that we must have worried him some because I notice he has come back to this session of Parliament much reduced in weight from when he left. I assume that is because we worried him so much with all the changes we were requesting.
It has always been the Conservative Party's policy to protect public servants who expose corruption. That is why we felt it was necessary to create a truly independent officer to hear and investigate disclosures from public servants. It now finally appears that the government has given in to that demand.
For years the Liberal government has ignored the demands of accountability experts, public servants, opposition parties and even the House of Commons committee on government operations by delaying this issue and resisting amendments to make this legislation truly effective.
I remember meeting with the President of the Treasury Board in his office before the bill was presented in the House. When he told me what the bill was going to consist of, I told him that in my mind it would have no credibility with public servants because it lacked an independent commissioner. Our differences began there, but we have worked hard at resolving those differences. I think we have a better piece of legislation as a result.
The thing that concerns me is that the government has reintroduced a bill that actually has not changed from the bill it introduced in the last Parliament. I am not sure whether that is just an arrogant government used to operating with a majority, but it did not take long for it to realize that things have changed. It is now a minority government and it has to do business a little differently. It seems that the government is working more effectively in this session of Parliament than in previous sessions because we are making improvements to legislation.
The bill was introduced last fall, and it was not until June 16 of this year that it became clear to the President of the Treasury Board that the bill as written by the government would not be accepted by the committee. No member of the committee was prepared to accept the bill, so the Liberals backed down and promised to create an independent integrity commissioner. I am pleased they decided to do that.
Even then we were hesitant to approve the changes until we actually saw the text of the provisions creating the independent body. The Liberals tried to tell us that the original bill created an independent process, which was untrue of course, and we wanted to ensure this legislation was not just another attempt to pull the wool over the committee's eyes.
Conservative members of the government operations committee have now reviewed these amendments in detail and we are satisfied that most of our demands have been met. We will therefore allow this legislation to pass at second reading and report stage after fair and reasonable debate.
Our support for the bill is qualified because it still remains flawed. For example, it would allow the government to conceal information revealed internally by whistleblowers for five years. The Liberals originally wanted to keep such matters hidden for 20 years, so this is a slight improvement. The Conservative Party would like to see, and we are going to insist, that this cover-up clause be eliminated completely.
The bill would allow cabinet to remove certain agencies, crown corporations and other bodies from the scope of the legislation whenever the government sees fit. The Conservative Party would take away that cabinet power to cover up corrections in agencies and crown corporations. These flaws are serious, but we do not believe they are fatal.
We will pass the legislation because it would put in place the basic structure needed to protect public servants who expose corruption. The problems I mentioned will be addressed by a future Conservative government.
I cannot emphasize enough how important the bill is for public servants and Canadian taxpayers. If this kind of legislation with the Conservative amendments had been in effect years ago, the waste that resulted from the sponsorship scandal, BSE and the Dingwall spending scandal, and countless similar spending scandals could have been nipped in the bud. I believe the legislation, although still imperfect, is a good first step toward cleaning up the way government is run.
I credit my Conservative colleagues for their excellent work in committee to create an independent commissioner, to hear and protect whistleblowers. I thank all members of the committee. There was a lot of hard work by all members of the committee. We came up with what I think, as the President of Treasury Board said, is a workable piece of legislation that still needs improvement but one that we are going to work on.
One of the improvements we were able to make, thanks to the hard work and the insistence of my colleague from Nepean—Carleton, was that the RCMP be included in the legislation. I am pleased that we won that and that is thanks to my colleague from Nepean—Carleton.
During committee hearings we heard from somewhere in the neighbourhood of 15 to 20 witnesses and without fail, every one of them told us that, unless we had an independent commissioner, the legislation would probably be of no value. I must thank those witnesses because many of them had lost their jobs over having the integrity to come forth when they saw something that was inappropriate in government. We heard harrowing stories, one after the other, where public servants who had been working for 25 years or 30 years who had come forth with an account of wrongdoing and consequently lost their jobs because they had come forth. The legislation will ensure that it does not happen to future public servants.
I spent 22 years as a public servant. I am very proud of my time in the public service. I must say though that during that 22 years I saw incidents that I am not very proud of and I am sure that the government would not be very proud if it knew what was going on in some of the departments.
I saw cases where it got so bad that staff would not talk to a supervisor without having witnesses because they were fearful of recrimination. That, hopefully, will be stopped with this current legislation.
The legislation says that the Parliament of Canada, we the government, believes that each and every member of the public service is a worthwhile individual and deserves the support and protection of Parliament. I am so proud to have had a part in the legislation that will bring that forth.
As a Conservative member of Parliament I am proud to stand in the House on behalf of my former public service colleagues throughout Canada and in fact, around the world, and tell them that, although the legislation is not perfect, I am proud of what our committee accomplished and I will continue to work at protecting such a fine group of people.