Mr. Speaker, I want to come back to what I was saying before oral question period. I was talking about how important the Access to Information Act is. We saw proof of this again yesterday when the Minister of Finance tabled his mini budget, with a 300% difference between his estimates and reality. And yet this is called transparency. The Minister of Finance talks to the media and financial experts and provides information in order to prove that the surplus will be approximately $4 billion.
With a wave of the Liberal wand, he is now talking about an $11 billion surplus. So, once again, we were not being given all the facts. The Liberals have always boycotted transparency in Parliament. They have always worked to keep information secret. In fact, the best way to control a business is to control the flow of information. The best way to manipulate things is to control the flow of information. These people have become experts in the field since I became a member in June 1997. They have not changed. They may have changed Prime Minister, but their attitude remains the same.
Hon. members will recall last year, within weeks of the election, how the Prime Minister was going on about the democratic deficit. One might have concluded that the measures to eradicate that deficit might have included allowing parliamentarians to have better access to information. Nothing has improved, however. The recent report by the commissioner gave grades from A to F. The Privy Council Office was one of the ones that got the most negative attention, and this is the same office that did not provide full information when the public accounts committee set out to understand the sponsorship scandal.
In my student days, people were graded A, B, C, D or E. E was really bad, so imagine what F means. These people come to committee and promise to improve. There is political interference in access to information, and to counteract that interference, the commissioner needs more power, more staff, more means of obtaining the required information, so that my colleagues, the media and the public will be better served when requesting information.
The whole thing becomes a bit complex, because often the requests go through the PCO and then to the appropriate department. Imagine the interference at the departmental level as well as at the PCO. Now as well we realize that it is also within the committee examining the Access to Information Act.
All parties were unanimous in their desire to revise the legislation. They even asked Commissioner Reid to propose a bill that would improve and reinforce access to information.
Once again, they dragged their feet. It was yes in committee and no before Parliament. That is the Liberal mindset. Have you noticed where things are at with employment insurance? They say yes in committee and no in Parliament. Often decisions are made in committee and denied before Parliament. This is called the democratic deficit.