Mr. Speaker, I thank the President of the Treasury Board for his remarks.
I thank fellow committee members of all parties who made a contribution to bringing about this bill.
I believe this bill is imperfect, but it is an improvement over the status quo. As a representative of thousands of public servants in my national capital region riding, I am honoured to have been part of the team that helped put this bill together.
There is one particular clause that leaves me with some concern. I would like to hear the comments of the Treasury Board president. It is the clause we call the cover-up clause, which gives the government the right to keep secret any information related to internal disclosures for up to five years. In other words, access to information requests could be denied on subject material related to a disclosure made by a public servant for up to five years.
Originally the government had included this cover-up clause and applied it for 20 years, but the changes we were able to secure brought it down to five. The Information Commissioner indicates to us that if this clause had been in place during the time of the Liberal sponsorship scandal, we might never have learned the details of that criminal conspiracy. I wonder if the Treasury Board president would agree that this particular clause should be revisited and removed.