Mr. Speaker, I would like to first of all congratulate my colleague for his fair and apt presentation on the Access to Information Act. He has shown a great deal of perspicacity. I have a question for him.
This Liberal government has been in power since 1993. It administers public funds. Now it is 2005. This government has had to deal with several financial scandals, including the sponsorship scandal, where money was transferred in a special way to federal institutions at the time of the 1995 referendum. Still today, we note a degree of hesitation on the part of the government to justify all of its institutional spending.
This is my question for my colleague: in the aftermath of the many scandals we are all familiar with, what interest can this government still have, now, in wanting to conceal or deny public access to all f the facts about spending by the various institutions currently administered by it?