Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to the motion to amend the Access to Information Act.
I want to come at this one from a bit of a different angle. I have listened to the debate all afternoon. The minister was up a few minutes ago talking about whether the committee did or did not do its work, and committee members tried to challenge that.
I want to get back to why this needed to be brought to the House at this time and debated. Why are we discussing this amendment, when it could have been done long before this time?
I congratulate my colleague from Regina--Lumsden--Lake Centre for bringing the motion forward because it is important. It focuses the House on one of the big problems we have at the present time, which is accountability and transparency of the government. It is one of the reasons why the government is on its eleventh hour, or maybe a little beyond that, of its reign, a very short one as a result of Justice Gomery's report on the sponsorship scandal. It is all fresh in our minds and will continue to be fresh in our minds because it is so important.
The report laid out the facts which showed this was something that happened under the government's reign. It set up, ran and used the program to move money from the public purse into the Liberal Party of Canada. This was a theft of millions of dollars from the public treasury. It set up a culture of entitlement.
The government has had four consecutive wins. I guess if there is a lesson there for Canadians, it is that we should not leave any government in office too long. If this is what happens, that is not in the best interest of the public. Woe to our country if we give it five wins because it will send the wrong message. It would say that what the government has done is okay.
The electorate will have a choice. It will either condemn the actions of the government or it will condone it. A vote for the Liberals will be complicit. It will say that it is okay to be corrupt. I do not believe that reflects the values of Canadians. I think the government is about to learn that lesson. I would implore every Canadian to think very soberly. It is not about whether they grew up under a political banner of the Liberals, Conservatives or the NDP. They need to understand what is at risk in this election, which is the democracy on which our country was founded. We need to stand and protect that.
We just went through a Remembrance Day ceremony where we honoured our veterans for going to war and risking their lives to secure the democracy and the rule of law and justice. Yet we see it eroding before our very eyes. We in the House, where we come to protect and promote it, have seen that eroded. I see members of Parliament from all sides of the House failing to stand and fight to continue the battle to protect our democracy. This is very important. The amendments that have been brought forward shine the light on the lack of accountability and transparency by the government.
One thing that really amazes me is we have a motion before us, we will vote on it and if it passes, how many members in the House feel the government will act on it. I can think of votes in the House giving direction to the government of the day and the government has totally ignored them. That not only shows the amount of corruption, but it shows a lack of respect for the democracy of the land and for the will of the public, by extension through individual members of the House.
Some of these motions have been pretty significant such as the hepatitis C file. I remember when that came to the House. It was an issue we had been fighting for many years. It was a directive by the members of the House of Commons to the government that those individuals outside of the 1986 to 1990 window should be compensated. Yet not one cheque has been signed to comply with that motion.
We saw the same thing with another one that I brought forward to the House on the sale of pharmaceuticals to the United States on Internet pharmacies. It was a directive by 288 members to zero in the House. Yet we have seen absolutely nothing from the government to give us any confidence that this will happen.
This happens all the time. This will be the 15th time. We will vote on this, the House will agree with the motion and the government will ignore it. That is contempt of Parliament if I ever saw it, and it has to stop.
Why is it so important for us to deal with the Access to Information Act? I think it has to be examined because there is a question here. How does the government think it is in the interests of Canadians to take their money and put it into foundations, for example, which already have $9 billion in them, setting it aside so it can be hidden from them? Foundations are outside the purview of the Auditor General and outside access to information. It is as if the money the government puts into foundations has nothing to do with public money. It is as if it is Liberal money that the government is just sliding into a separate fund.
In light of the sponsorship scandal and the dollars we see going into foundations, we have to ask this question. What government in its right mind would take that amount of money and put it outside the Access to Information Act and the Auditor General's ability to investigate? I believe the government will have a difficult time answering that question.
I asked the Auditor General that question when she came to the health committee a little over a year ago. I was interested in one of those foundations, Canada Health Infoway Inc., which has $1.2 billion. I asked the Auditor General if she was not concerned about the number of dollars being spent or not being spent in Health Infoway. She said she was concerned and would like to take a look at it, but it was outside her ability to do so. She said she was just as concerned about the other eight foundations that were set up by the government.
Nine billion dollars of taxpayers' money is sitting in these foundations. I am speaking of foundations like Genome Canada, the millennium scholarship fund and many others. Why would a government not set up foundations so the House and Canadian taxpayers can understand what is in them?
Therein lies the reason we sought two changes, one under a minority government, which was the ability for the Auditor General to access a bit of crack in the accountability of these foundations. We were able to get Bill C-43 passed, which provides the Auditor General with the ability to look at foundations. Hopefully she will be able to look at them, although I am not sure that will actually happen. It is supposed to. The other change is the motion before us today. We will see whether the government will actually comply with it. I believe we will win. I believe there will be another motion on the floor. We will see how that vote goes. But I do not think anybody is too convinced that it is actually going to happen.
Why is Canada Health Infoway so important? This is not just about money or accountability. The Health Infoway money is about the loss of lives. The Baker-Norton report estimated that 24,000 deaths occur in Canada's acute care centres because of a lack of information or medical errors. If Health Infoway had medical records following patients, that would go a long way toward saving many lives.
This is not just about a government that is trying to hide money for its own self-interest. This is not just about the foundations that were set up inappropriately and our inability to access information. This is about government accountability.
What do we have to do to fix this? Accountability measures will be brought in by the Conservative Party when we become the government after the next election. We will have to change the rules of the House, unfortunately, because they are not stiff enough. The Liberal government does not understand what it means to be a servant of the public.
The Conservative Party will change those rules so that no corporate money will go to any political organization or political party. We have to limit to $1,000 any money going to a political organization.
We have to make sure there is whistleblower legislation so public civil servants know when they see corruption within government that they will have the opportunity to blow the whistle without losing their jobs or being disciplined.
We have to make sure that the rules regarding lobbyists change. Parliamentarians must not be impacted by those who have become lobbyists for five years after they have worked on the Hill or as senior bureaucrats or as members of Parliament.
We also have to give the Auditor General more power.
All of these measures have to be brought in. Why? Because we have to keep reminding the House, and now forcing the House, to understand that the job of members of Parliament is to represent the people who put them into office, not the people who lobby them or give them funds. That has to change in the House or we will not have democracy in this country. That is why it is so important that we change the act now. That is why we are going into an election: to have Canadians deal with this corrupt government.