Debates of June 14th, 2005

Committees of the House

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that may be his comment, but it is factually incorrect. Unless the opposition days are exhausted, the hon. member will be familiar with the fact that the government cannot bring in the supply days, so obviously the government has to produce the number of opposition days necessary in order to arrive at these votes. That is obvious, and the hon. member knows that I am sure. That is the way it works.

Now if the hon. member is arguing that he wanted an opposition day on a particular day, an opposition day is a government order. A government order is set by the government and it is of course announced on the floor of the House by the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons. I held that position previously for some seven and a half years. I designated a number of opposition days in my time. I changed a number of days.

No opposition day officially exists until the day starts. The minister introduces an informal calendar, which he produces for the benefit of members. It did not even exist until I became House leader. Following this, the minister designates an actual day on the Thursday prior, and the minister can reverse the designation any day, even when that occurs. I have done that countless times as well.

The hon. member has not listened to the answer. Maybe that is why he is asking these questions.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the real reason John Reid is not being renewed is because he has a record of exposing Liberal tricks, balderdash and eventually Liberal corruption.

I remember when he came before the government operations committee and exposed the numerous loopholes which the government tried to hide in its so-called whistleblower protection act. Those loopholes, had they been in place during the time the Liberal Party was stealing Canadian tax dollars through the sponsorship scandal, would have covered up the scandal for as many as 20 years. They were exposed by one man, by John Reid.

I remember the Liberal members who were in the committee room at that time. They looked him in the eye with great anger and disappointment. They realized that he was not going to be a lapdog to them. I see some of those members and the same sort of contempt that they have on their faces today is how they looked at John Reid that day. I knew they were coming for John Reid after that moment.

I knew they were furious that he was doing his job as Information Commissioner and that he was exposing Liberal tricks and corruption. Were it not for John Reid's testimony that day, those Liberal tricks would never have been exposed and that whistleblower bill would have become a full instrument to cover up Liberal corruption. That is the real reason the government is trying to assassinate an officer of the House.

Why will the member not stand up in the House of Commons and admit that is what he and his party are trying to do?

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that was a pretty sad spectacle if I ever saw one.

First, I never said that John Reid was not to be reappointed. I have no idea whether it is even possible to have a second mandate for a commissioner because none has ever been granted. The government will decide whether it offers a candidacy. That is the way the process works. Maybe the member should look at his computer because he is not listening to the answer, not that it would make much difference.

Second, he referred to something about 20 years. I have been here 21 years and half of that time were Conservative years. The country was in deficit and going into debt. Almost every week a minister would resign under that regime. Ministers of finance had no credibility. The popularity of the government was about my shoe size. We all remember those Conservative days. We know that it is the same Conservative Party that went down about 10 percentage points in one year. No matter how one splices that, it cannot look different because that is how it is.

Everyone knows they are trying to get out of the mess they got themselves into this morning by failing to produce an opposition day. They are trying to splice that together again, but the last splice did not work and this one will not either.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as difficult as it is to follow a gifted orator and journeyman member of Parliament like the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, I would like to begin by complimenting my colleagues on the opposition benches for giving us the opportunity, on a day for their opposition day motion, to debate not one but two pressing issues. Contrary to what my colleague from Glengarry—Prescott—Russell says about not using opposition days well, in actual fact they have turned one issue into two and have given Canadians the opportunity in the twilight days of this Parliament to debate the issue that I feel is paramount, and that is access to information.

Let me begin by saying that freedom of information is the oxygen that democracy breathes. There is no greater champion in our country on the issue of freedom of information than our outgoing Information Commissioner, the hon. John Reid, who has valiantly tried in the last seven years to break down the barriers to open government and true access to information.

I would be remiss not to recognize and pay tribute as well to another long-standing champion on this issue who is no longer with us, John Bryden, a former member of Parliament. In his final days as an MP he was with the Conservative Party. He dedicated his entire career toward trying to open up Canadian government to freedom of information so citizens could access the inner workings of the governments that represent them.

Like many Canadians, I look to the senior statesman in Canadian journalism in many ways, Hugh Winsor, for inspiration and comment. He has an article in today's Globe and Mail and the headline reads, “A major government irritant is bowing out”. That sums it up. This is why John Reid is leaving us. He has been a major irritant to the Government of Canada because he has been forthright and honest about his dogged pursuit of changing the access to information rules.

I will not read what Mr. Winsor has to say but I recommend strongly that other people have a serious look at this. He makes the point quite clearly about what happened to Mr. Reid.

There were predictable turning points in Mr. Reid's career. One of them, as my colleague from the Conservatives pointed out, was his presentation to the government operations committee. It was not viewed very favourably when he pointed out glaring loopholes that had been built in to what the government tried to call whistleblowing legislation. It was really more like an act to protect ministers from whistleblowers, which is what Mr. Reid exposed, and that was not viewed too favourably.

I think the thing that was really the turning point in Mr. Reid's career, and my colleagues may agree, was he backed an access request to see former Prime Minister Chrétien's daily agendas. They may have shown how much time he was spending at the Royal Ottawa golf club. He also backed an access request, which he deemed to be appropriate, calling for the daily briefings for Art Eggleton when he was the minister of national defence.

The Privy Council Office attempted to block Mr. Reid's scope by filing 25 applications in the Federal Court for judicial review of his rulings. In other words, Mr. Reid saw it to be absolutely fitting and appropriate that we should have public access to the former prime minister's daily itineraries and Mr. Eggleton's briefing notices.

The PCO clammed up in this culture of secrecy that dominates Ottawa today. It went to ground, threw up the barriers and started filing what we would call in the private sector slap suits. In other words, it filed 25 court appeals for judicial review to silence this issue. It lost all of them. Mr. Reid was found to be absolutely accurate. His interpretation of the access to information laws was correct, and the government should release this information. To this day it has refused. We have not seen those agendas. This is a graphic illustration of what is wrong with the freedom of information laws in our country.

The laws exist on paper, but it is like the bill of rights in third world countries where it looks good on paper but the proof is in the pudding. To this day we are still waiting for these things. Even though Mr. Reid won all 25 applications in the federal court, the government is still not coughing up the documents and the commissioner has had to go back to the federal court.

Mr. Reid's career has been seven years of frustration. After focusing attention on the need for reform and trying to enforce the laws as they are, it has been nothing but headaches.

We will be very sorry to see him go. We very much regret what I view to be a binding recommendation of a newly created access to information, privacy and ethics committee. A House of Commons standing committee recommended that Mr. Reid's term of office be extended for one year. Partly because of the sensitive nature of the work the committee is doing and the point that we have reached in terms of trying to achieve access to information, for the purposes of continuity, the committee feels it is critical that the same information officer maintain his office for one more year.

We have noticed a worrisome trend. The Government of Canada has ignored the recommendations of House of Commons standing committees. I am sure we could parrot off four or five recent examples where the standing committees have very clearly given direction to government to take a certain route and they have been ignored, completely contrary to the Prime Minister's commitment to do something about the democratic deficit.

Sunlight is a powerful disinfectant and some of us view freedom of information laws as the sunlight of politics. Freedom of information laws are the natural enemy to a culture of secrecy that has allowed corruption to flourish in the country. It is hard to overstate what a central role freedom of information plays in our culture.

The House of Commons justice committee referred to Canada's Access to Information Act as holding a similar significance to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Supreme Court recently referred to our Access to Information Act as quasi-constitutional. That is what we are playing with here. These are fundamental rights that are the cornerstone of any western democracy, yet they are being trampled on, ignored and trivialized by the experience, certainly in the past seven years when Mr. Reid has been our access to information officer.

Too clearly, many senior officials in Ottawa subscribe to the views of Sir Humphrey in the British comedy Yes, Minister when he said to his boss, “You can have good government or you can have open government, but Mr. Prime Minister, you cannot have both”. We do not want to reduce ourselves to the level of a sitcom here, but we are approaching that point in our treatment of access to information laws. While transparency and accountability are the buzzwords of the day in Ottawa, in practice there are many who resist them and who spend their every waking moment trying to find ways to confound people's right to know, their right to access to information. Very few government insiders are fans of the public's right to know. That is the fundamental problem that we have.

When members of the public submit access to information requests, too often government officials undermine the intent of the act by imposing unreasonable delays, or performing inadequate searches, or charging outlandish fees or fees that constitute a barrier to getting that access to information, or in the larger policy level, by opposing the expansion of the act so it might apply to more activities of government. That is where my interest comes in.

It is hard for me to understand, for instance, why only 49 of 246 crown agencies and corporations are subject to the act. Why can I get easy access to information on the Atlantic Pilotage Authority and not on Canada Post or VIA Rail?

In the last Parliament I was proud to second a private member's bill, Bill C-462, which was put forward by my former colleague, Mr. John Bryden. In that bill, John Bryden for 10 years tried to break the barriers within his own party, his own ruling government, to introduce meaningful amendments to the Access to Information Act. Being a former journalist, Mr. Bryden had firsthand knowledge of the barriers that are in place.

When Mr. Bryden was not re-elected in the last election I took over his bill and introduced an identical bill, in fact word for word, under my own name, Bill C-201.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I thank hon. members for their recognition but it was not my bill. It was a composite effort from all members of Parliament who are interested in this issue. Many on the Liberal side and the opposition side sat on a special subcommittee that Mr. Bryden put together for that very reason.

I think it is significant to note that Bill C-201 was the first bill, government or private, introduced in the 38th Parliament, which is why it is numbered Bill C-201. I think that is fitting because it is the single most important thing we could do to improve government.

If we had passed no other piece of legislation in this 38th Parliament, Canada would have been a better place had we passed Bill C-201. I say that without any hesitation. I do not say that to pat myself on the back. It is simply the conclusion that I have come to the more I study how critically important freedom of information is. We should not use that term lightly. We should reflect on the weight of those words. Freedom of information is a cornerstone of any western democracy.

In anticipation of speaking I was looking at some notes and reading something a history professor had to say. He states, “Secrecy has been the default rule of government for centuries. Revolutions in England in 1688 and in France in 1789 slowly overturned the absolute rule of monarchs and ushered in the right to free speech and the legislative process of law-making was open to public scrutiny. But within the bowels of the bureaucracy secrecy was still very much the rule and remains so to this day”.

This was stated by the author of Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age which is to be published this year. He goes on to state, “As modern governments expanded their operations and reach, government clerks evolved into bureaucrats with extraordinary new powers to shape the content of government policy and secrecy became the rule of the day. Secrecy became the new absolute power”.

That is a worrisome thought.

In the last couple of weeks I am sure we all noticed a survey, the results of which were on the front pages of 45 newspapers across the country. It was sponsored by the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Canadian Newspaper Association and was entitled “Access denied”.

These journalists conducted a comprehensive survey of every municipal, provincial and the federal government to find out just how easy it is to get access to information under the current regime that exists. Guess where the federal government ranked in their survey? There is no big surprise here. It ranked dead last.

I believe the Province of Alberta ranked first, where 93% of all access to information requests were fulfilled to the satisfaction of the applicant. They were not always completely filled but they were filled to the satisfaction of the applicant unless there were reasonable grounds, such as national security or personal privacy, that the information could not be shared.

Manitoba, I am proud to say, my home province, ranked second, where 88% of all applications for information were filled to the satisfaction of the applicant.

Guess where the federal government wound up on that survey? Twenty-five percent of all access to information requests were filled to the satisfaction of the applicant. That is less than one-quarter.

Open government can and does exist. Two of the most successful provincial governments in the country have no problem living up to the principles of open government.

The federal government, however, is slammed shut with access denied. We do not have the right to know, no matter what it says on paper. Notwithstanding the fact that we have an officer of Parliament charged with the enforcement of the Access to Information Act, we cannot get that information. It is like giving people directions and then telling them that they cannot get there from here. Well we cannot get the information that we deserve as Canadian taxpayers in this particular regime.

Mr. John Reid, Canada's outgoing Information Commissioner, made a very poignant statement recently when he said:

In one way or another, all the checks and balances designed to limit abuses of government power are dependent upon there being access by outsiders to governments’ insider information.

A public service which holds tight to a culture of secrecy is a public service ripe for abuse.

We have graphic evidence of that before us daily in the House of Commons. We could spend all of our time chasing what the government likes to call “rogue bureaucrats”, or trying to plug the random ad hoc examples of abuse when we are lucky enough to stumble across them, or we could go to the root of the problem and wipe the slate clean. We could shine the disinfectant of sunlight on this culture of corruption that exists. If it is a powerful disinfectant, we could expose this and let the free democracy in which we live do its job to cleanse corruption from our system.

We have an example of how we might do that, which has been lovingly crafted by my former colleague, John Bryden, into Bill C-201. Let me give a bit of the sad history of what happened to Bill C-201 and where it is languishing today.

Not only was I the first one to table a bill in Parliament, government or private member, on the very first day that I could, a bill that had broad cross party support from all of the parties in the House of Commons, but then, by the greatest of good fortune, my name was drawn in the private members' lottery as the fourth bill to be debated in this 38th Parliament.

The government found itself with a real problem. The Liberals had a minority government, they had a bill they were deathly afraid of and they had a private member with an opportunity to debate the bill in four day's time. They sent out emissaries to approach me and, very wisely, chose one of the Liberals who I have great admiration and respect for, the current Minister of Justice, to be the emissary.

The minister told me that the government had every intention of introducing all the things I was calling for in my bill and that if I would withdraw my bill, take it off the Order Paper, agree not to have it debated in the House and subsequently passed, the government would introduce comparable legislation at least as good if not better in this session of Parliament. That was the commitment made.

Having not just fallen off the turnip truck, I wanted to have that confirmed so I pressed for specifics and details. I received, “Yes, this will be in there; yes, the crown corporations will be there; yes, cabinet confidences within reason will be in there; yes, all of the good things that were crafted laboriously over a decade in Bill C-201 will be included in government legislation and it will be prioritized to be in this session of Parliament”.

That was in October 2004. We now find ourselves in June 2005. The months started ticking by. Department of Justice officials produced bill after bill but we are still waiting for access to information legislation which was supposed to be priority number one.

Six months later, at the access to information committee, with great fanfare and pomp and circumstance, the Minister of Justice tabled at that committee, not a bill, but a discussion paper so we could begin the process of trying to analyze and determine if research is necessary to find out if there might be a problem with the Access to Information Act. What an absolute travesty, a breach of trust, a breach of promise and a clear violation of the commitment that was made to me to produce access to information legislation.

The government has no interest in open government. It is a government more along the lines of Sir Humphrey of Yes, Minister . It believes we can have good government and open government but not both. That is the empirical evidence we have to deal with. What other conclusion can we draw?

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I must congratulate the member on bringing forth the Bryden bill again and I understand his frustration with the Minister of Justice. However he did not tell the rest of the story.

I also happen to be on the privacy and ethics committee and I heard the minister say that the government would not be introducing the bill, that it would study the issue first and who knows what. I then heard the leader of the Conservative Party, Stephen Harper, come out and say that it would be its--

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

The hon. member of course remembers that he is not to use names.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I apologize, Mr. Speaker.

The leader of the official opposition then came out with the Conservative Party's policy on the topic of information. What happens then is that the Minister of Justice comes out and says that the government will introduce a bill in the fall. One minute he says that he will introduce the bill, the next minute he says that he will study it and then, in response to the leader of the official opposition, he says that he will introduce a bill in the fall.

I do not often compliment the Liberal government and I certainly do not compliment past Liberal members, but I will compliment Mr. Reid, a former Liberal minister, who has done an outstanding job. He has been on the commission for about a third of its life and has done an admirable job and is most competent.

It appears we will be having an election sometime in the near future. It appears that unless Minister Cotler changes his mind again, we will have a bill. It appears--

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

The hon. member of course remembers that what applies on the left side also applies to the right side.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

You have corrected me twice, Mr. Speaker, and I do apologize for that.

The Minister of Justice then said that he will introduce a bill in the fall on this subject.

We know we are going to have new legislation and it appears that we will have an election in the very near future. We know the whole issue of access to information is a mess. The member for Winnipeg Centre gave statistics on the federal record for access to information. We know that the Canadian Newspaper Association gave the federal government an F on access to information as far as a grade.

My question to the member for Winnipeg Centre is: Do we have any choice? We have a most competent commissioner, we have a messy situation, we have an election coming and we have a bill that appears will be introduced by the government. I do not see how we have any choice.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of my colleague who is the chair of the access to information, privacy and ethics committee. I do feel that the only hope of steering this issue through at this time is if we maintain the continuity of the expertise that exists on this subject as developed by this information officer over his tenure of seven years. I think it would be very difficult for anyone else to pick up where this information officer left off.

What I find really frustrating, and I know my colleague shares my frustration, is that had I not been duped into dropping my bill, Bill C-201 would be law today. It would be one of those rare things where a private member's bill would have succeeded all the way and passed, and Canada would be a better place today had we allowed that bill.

I know it is jaded of me to assume this but I fear that the issue has more to do with political advantage than with actual merits of the argument in that the government would love to go into the next federal election saying that if it is elected it will introduce new access to information legislation. Whereas the truth is that when elected it did everything it could to stifle access to information legislation. It is one of those things that it is saving for the election campaign. It wants to be able to say that if Canadians want meaningful access to information law they had better re-elect another Liberal government because it is the only one that will deliver on it.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The evidence contradicts any such story but that seems to be the motivation here. As a result, another year will go by without freedom of information legislation.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I can understand the frustration of my colleague from Winnipeg Centre. However, I want him to explain to me how the Liberal representatives were able to pull the wool over his eyes, when he himself had the opportunity, I believe, to introduce the first private member's bill. He had the opportunity to introduce the bill amended by Mr. Bryden. For the benefit of those listening, I must explain that there is a draw to determine the order in which MPs can introduce a private member's bill. The member for Winnipeg Centre had this opportunity.

I can understand his frustration. However, I want him to try to explain to us how the Liberal representatives—who told him not to introduce this bill under the pretext that they were going to introduce something similar—were able to pull the wool over his eyes. I want to better understand this.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question is an obvious one that comes to mind.

If a person really is sincere about an issue and not about the political gain, then the person will pass the puck to the one best able to put the puck in the net. We all know that a bill introduced by government is more likely to succeed all the way through the Senate to royal assent than a private member's bill which would hit obstacles all the way.

Because I have great trust and admiration for the Liberal member of Parliament who came to me and made this commitment, I believed him. I trusted him and had confidence in him that he was sincere. As an added bonus, it freed up my private member's slot and allowed me to put forward another bill that I am very committed to, which is bankruptcy protection for workers in the event of bankruptcy. That is the logic. I am trying to answer as honestly as I can.

I trusted the member that he would introduce a government bill because he made that commitment not once, but twice in great detail. It gave me the opportunity to introduce another bill that I am very passionate about and that is protection of employees' wages and pensions in the event of bankruptcy.

I hope that answers my colleague's question.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member to be an advocate of accountability around this place. He has been a breath of fresh air in the House of Commons and in committees.

We were sitting in the same committee meeting when John Reid testified. I remember his testimony to be one of the most brilliant interventions I have witnessed in my short time here. I have not been here long, but I recall that intervention. It was very carefully laid out. He explained how the current whistleblower law that the Liberals have introduced would actually do more to cover up corruption than it would to expose it. He laid out his case in meticulous and legalistic detail.

I recall how angry the Liberal members on that committee were that day. They were absolutely furious that someone would expose these loopholes in their bill. I remember at that very moment thinking to myself that the Liberals were going to go for his job. I knew it at that moment. His willingness to be independent and outspoken in defence of freedom of information and in defence of accountability would mean he would pay a very serious price. We are now seeing those predictions come true.

I ask this question with a degree of sadness. I fundamentally believe that the government succeeds in corrupting the process of freedom of information. It will put a blanket over all of the corruption that goes on in government and prevent the light of day from ever shining on it. All of that Liberal fraud, Liberal corruption and Liberal bribery that we have learned about through the sponsorship scandal and the Gomery commission could be suppressed. It all came out because of access to information in the first place.

If the Liberal government succeeds in covering it over by corrupting the freedom of information process, scandals like the sponsorship affair will never reach the public eye. Had the Liberals succeeded in covering up the information process, we would never have known that ad scam had occurred. It might still be ongoing today.

I wonder if the hon. member is as concerned as I am at the deep-seated implications that may genuinely flow from the government's attempt to corrupt the freedom of information process. Is he as concerned as I am that this could lead to greater Liberal theft, greater Liberal fraud, and even greater Liberal bribery? Does he share those concerns?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague too has rapidly earned a reputation as being a champion of the issue of accountability and transparency. I look to him for many years of exposing on behalf of Canadians everything that is wrong about this place.

To answer his question briefly, I can only restate that one cannot overstate what a central place freedom of information holds in our society. The Supreme Court of Canada calls access to information quasi-constitutional. It is one of those fundamental rights and freedoms that a free western society enjoys. We apparently do not appreciate what we have because we have let it go lax. We have let it slide to the point where one can no longer honestly say that Canadians enjoy the right to know and the right to access to information, because the evidence would speak otherwise.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak today on the motion by the Conservative Party. This motion seeks to extend John Reid's term as the Information Commissioner of Canada by one year. It is an even greater pleasure since there is a story behind the government's decision not to renew this commissioner's contract. This is what I want to talk about.

Obviously, I could quote from the commissioner's annual reports; I could quote statements from the newspapers and so on, but I will leave that to other colleagues who will be speaking. Instead, I want to focus on the Liberal government's decision. We must not forget that the commissioner, John Reid, is a former Liberal minister. So this decision affects the Liberal family. That is the real issue. The Liberal family has had a serious problem since the revelations made at the Gomery commission and since the Bloc Québécois, among others, decided to shed light in the House on what will probably be considered the biggest scandal in the history of Canada and Quebec. This scandal is a direct attack on Quebec.

The problem is that the government is stuck with a promise. Indeed, in the election campaign, the Prime Minister said he would be more transparent. It is all very well to write about transparency and to want to table bills. My colleague from Winnipeg Centre found out the hard way about the Liberals' style of governing. He had a very good private member's bill. He had the opportunity to table it at first reading, to amend the Access to Information Act, to have it apply to all crown corporations so that more quasi-governmental organizations could be brought under the commissioner's sway. However, the Liberal Party decided to introduce a framework for action rather than legislation, as it gave it time. That is the problem. The Liberal Party needs time to try to forget this scandal.

Why are they going after the information commissioner directly? Because this commissioner is getting more and more requests in order to unscramble the impact of this scandal. That is the commissioner's problem.

I am a member of the committee. Since the revelations of the Gomery commission and of the Auditor General, the commissioner has reported an overwhelming number of requests received by his office. Quite rightly, the people are asking questions about things they have seen. They are asking for documents. Journalists are too. So there are a lot of requests, and work is backed up.

The government, the Liberal Party itself, is governing with public money, as we have seen. We will see what the Gomery commission decides. This government does not want us to discover anything else. So it is restricting the means of the information commissioner.

Believe it or not, the information commissioner currently has a backlog of over 2,000 requests. Work is a year and a half behind. All the Liberals can find to do is change the commissioner. Obviously, communications would be simpler if the government said the commissioner was not doing the work, which explained why so many files were late. The officials at the Privy Council told us in committee that perhaps better organization within the office of the information commissioner would result in a saving. In the end, it is quite simple. Too many requests have been made to the office of the information commissioner because of corruption among the Liberals.

They also say they are transparent and have a limited budget. The commissioner was given an 18-month supplemental budget. However, the requests continue to flow in at a rate 25% to 30% higher than previous years. From year to year, since 2002-2003, there has been a 25% increase in requests for access to information. Individuals, some MPs and journalists are making the requests. Many individuals are requesting documents. They want to know about the things they hear coming out of some government departments.

They want to have the documents. There is a greater demand not because of the governance of the Canadian government, but simply because of the Liberal corruption. We were told flat out that there is no end in sight to the requests. Individuals feel their opinions on politicians are under attack. They no longer trust them. They want to have certain documents in their own possession and are requesting certain information. They are right to do so.

The only way for us, the politicians, to all come out of this as winners, is for citizens to regain their trust in government, ask questions and request information. The commissioner should have a bigger budget for this.

But no, the governing Liberal Party has decided there is no advantage in having individuals, journalists or even MPs know more. The Liberals are limiting the work of the commissioner. They are not giving him the necessary budget. They know the needs are increasing, but they claim the commissioner might not be doing his job properly, that he is mismanaging his commission and that he should reorganize it.

So the decision is made not to renew his mandate and to instead appoint someone else, in hopes that the new commissioner will do better. That is insulting to the intelligence of the members of this House. Someone new, who does not know the ropes, is going to come along and fix everything right away. The same thing will happen as with Privacy Commissioner Stoddart. She has been trying for two years to get the privacy commissioner's office back on its feet after the mammoth waste by Mr. Radwanski. She has not yet managed to do so. The restructuring has been going on for two years.

So if we change the commissioner, the processing of requests will slow down even more. This may suit the Liberal Party of Canada, which wants to slow them down at least until the next election is over. Then if they do not like the outcome, and are still in a minority in this House, they will want to slow things down.

That is the purpose of my speech: to try to get the Liberals to see some sense, and tell them to quit messing around with the system, to quit using public funds for their Liberal partisan politicking. The information commissioner must be allowed to act. This commissioner wanted to distance himself from everything Liberal, to establish his independence, and now the Liberals will not accept Commissioner Reid's having become independent and anxious to keep his distance from the Liberal machine and the Liberal political organization. He has got the message that the public want responses to their requests for information, want the documents they are asking for, and want an independent commissioner to respond and make them feel secure.

This will be totally to the advantage of parliamentarians, which is why the Bloc Québécois is going to support the Conservative motion to allow the commissioner to continue his work. They are asking for another year. As far as I am concerned, his mandate should be renewed from year to year, so that he can make public everything the public has suspicions about in connection with Liberal Party corruption. That is the reality. His task, in our opinion, is not only to answer requests from MPs, from Bloc Québécois members or their research staff, but also to provide documents readily to journalists.

We want a new bill. As the member for Winnipeg Centre is requesting, we want a new bill quickly to amend the Access to Information Act to permit all crown corporations and quasi-governmental agencies—the whole machine and everything financed by the federal government—to be subject to access to information. That way, when the public decides that something is perhaps not functioning in the system, it can be readily fixed.

The Liberal Party is not capable of doing that. If the federal government is to be fixed up, everyone will have to be involved. The Liberal members, who are up to their necks in corruption, will not manage it on their own. We must not forget that they lack the capability and the intelligence. We have seen that and will see it in Judge Gomery's report. Still, people have to join together, try to reveal everything possible on this subject and call for information in order to get all the facts. Every attempt and anything that has to do with any kind of corruption has to be made public. At that point, slowly but surely, we will manage to straighten out this federal government.

We remind the House that this has been a major effort by the Bloc. We were the ones who began the cleanup here in the Canadian government. It is time people stopped thinking we only oppose. We have proved it. We are showing the people of Canada how the federal government treats Quebec. This is one more reason for Quebeckers to think that, some day, perhaps, they would do better to govern themselves in their own country, rather than in this land of corruption.

This will not be because we did not try to open the gates and clean out the Augean stable that the federal government has become. That is what we are doing. I think that it can be done with the help of all the citizens. For starters, they should be entitled to quick answers to their questions.

The only body that should remain neutral and allow the citizens to submit their requests and the important questions they are asking about how the government is managed is the office of the information commissioner. It is his job to provide quick answers to the citizens. He should have all the staff he needs to ask any department or quasi-governmental agency to answer the questions asked by citizens, members of Parliament, journalists and all. This must be done quickly so that no government is ever allowed, as the Liberal party of Canada was, to use government money and all the powers and operations of state to promote its own party. We in Quebec will take a very harsh view of this. We already do in view of all the corruption at the very foundations of the Liberal party. This is a very important effort in which citizens can become involved through access to information

All too often, access to information is taken too lightly. The federal government is a huge apparatus and always expanding. Since 2000, it has grown by 37%. It is not an apparatus that tends to shrink; it always tends to expand. One need only look at the bills introduced in the House: departments are split to create two new ones and new departments are created in all the provinces.

The tendency of the federal Liberal government is to expand the machinery of state. And the larger it gets, the less manageable it becomes. Everyone knows that, except the Liberal party of Canada. In spite of everything, it continues to expand the federal machinery so that public servants will be present all over Canada. It probably aspires to be the biggest employer of all; that is one choice. The difficulty is that, meanwhile, the people's real problems, issues such as health, education and poverty, are not being solved.

That is the reality. Money is spent to establish a presence, raise the government's profile, and have public servants give answers to the people. But in the meantime, men and women are in dire poverty and the health system is suffering. The decision handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada last week was harsh reality for the Liberal Party.

They have been cutting transfers to the provinces since 1996, when the current Prime Minister was Minister of Finance. Now the highest court in the land states that the health care system can no longer cope; it is falling apart on all sides; and there will be a two-tier health system. That is directly related to the cuts made by the Liberal Party of Canada. It is that simple. It was the cuts in transfer payments that forced the provinces to react by making cuts in health care.

Now, in the view of the court, the government cannot continue like this because everyone is entitled to care. Health care is part of our rights and freedoms. So if someone has the money to pay for private care, a private parallel system must be allowed to exist. That is a two-tier health system.

I am very curious to see how the Quebec health minister will deal with this. He will try to say that it does not exist, when in reality it does. That is the harsh truth. And all because the federal Liberal government cut the transfers to the provinces in 1996.

It should be remembered that when the system was established back in 1960, the federal government paid 50% of the costs; by 1996, it was only paying 12%. This rate is going back up to 25% under the agreement signed by the provincial premiers. But last week, the Supreme Court said that the damage had been done. The health system is in bad shape. Under Quebec's Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, citizens have a right to demand care. The Supreme Court decided to say that this was correct—and all because the federal Liberal government decided to cut the transfers to the provinces in 1996.

That makes citizens, men and women, Quebeckers most importantly and all Canadians increasingly critical of the federal government. It is not surprising, therefore, that there are more access to information requests regarding everything having to do with the federal government.

The Gomery commission, in the wake of the sponsorship scandal, is one such example. The gun registry scandal is another, which gobbled up vast sums of money. Some people do not believe it but the initial cost of the gun registry was set at $2 million, although it has cost $2 billion. The problem is that the Liberal Party has not suffered too much as a result since people refuse to believe it could say that the registry would cost $2 million and have it end up costing $2 billion. Liberal or not, Canadians and Quebeckers do not understand this. They all believe that this is not possible. But it is possible, here, in Canada. The Liberals said it would cost $2 million, but it has cost $2 billion. That is the reality.

More and more people are realizing this, asking questions and demanding answers from the Information Commissioner. This figure is so high that some people cannot believe it. Clearly, the Liberal Party has benefited. This took place in 2003, 2004 and 2005 in Canada. It has completely lost control of the program, which will cost a fortune. Supplementary estimates for this registry have been tabled every fall for the past four years, and next fall will be no different.

Why did the government lose control? Because it is too big. The ministers responsible—both past and present—were perhaps unable to run this program. That is the reality. It is a big machine and running it requires competent people. Sometimes, particularly when it comes to the Liberal Party, the best people are not chosen or the least bad are picked. That is how the Liberals govern. The Liberals will have to live with the consequences. We will be waiting for them in the next federal election campaign. We will be there in order to call them to order and defend, once again, the interests of Quebeckers.

For the interests of Quebeckers would be better defended by extending the contract of Information Commissioner John Reid. Even though he is a former Liberal minister, it would be better if he kept his position. Mr. Reid was a straight shooter. He was always able to tell it like it is in committee and in his annual reports. I sincerely believe that he truly wants to answer every question and to take part in drafting a new bill to make all governmental and para-governmental bodies accountable to the information commissioner.

When we take on such a major reform and try to resolve the 18-month backlog of requests caused by understaffing, it is not the time to bring in beginners, but the time to keep experienced people in place. What is more, Mr. Reid wants to eliminate the backlog and stay on top of the 25% increase in requests. As I was saying, he was quite clear in committee that there was no end in sight to the requests that have been made since the sponsorship scandal.

Mr. Reid is aware of the problem caused by the volume of requests. What he needs is more money in order to hire more staff. He also needs new legislation to make all governmental and para-governmental agencies—Via Rail, Canada Post, or whatever—accountable to the information commissioner.

In the sponsorship scandal, these agencies spent taxpayers' money. They do have their own cash flows, which is what makes them para-governmental. However, these agencies were able—with no questions asked and without having to answer to anyone—to get away with spending money, buying advertising, waving the Canadian flag just about everywhere, all in the name of national unity. At the end of the day, their only purpose is to provide services. The purpose of Via Rail is to get passengers to their destination as quickly as possible, while the purpose of Canada Post is to deliver mail as quickly as possible.

For these reasons, the Bloc Québécois will support the request of the Conservative Party to renew Mr. Reid's contract.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank my hon. colleague for being an active member on the access to information committee.

It appears quite obvious to me and perhaps every member on this side of the House that what the Liberals are attempting to do, by the refusal to extend the contract of Mr. Reid, is to actually stifle and control information. That is an extremely dangerous thing to have happen in any democracy.

We have seen empirical evidence not only by this action but by other actions. We have heard the member for Winnipeg Centre talk about how he was hoodwinked into not tabling a private member's bill on access to information. We now see the attempt by the government not to extend the contract of a very competent Information Commissioner, despite the overwhelming support from opposition members.

The only conclusion I can draw is that the Liberals are trying to control the flow of information and the access to information. That is probably one of the most dangerous situations that any democracy can see. I would like to hear my hon. colleague's comments on that to see whether or not he shares the concerns that I have just outlined.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. He is also a significant contributor in committee.

He is absolutely right. What is even more serious is that the Prime Minister promised to govern with greater transparency. One more example of the Liberal habit of talking out of both sides of their mouth. They want to be more transparent, yet they also want to limit the Information Commissioner's budgets so he cannot process requests from the public.

Because the commissioner was insistent, the government eventually conceded. In fact, he continued to pressure the government by saying that new legislation was needed, as well as more resources. Let me assure you, neither the mechanism nor the machinery is transparent. The commissioner made several recommendations, but the government decided not to renew his contract. Yet he was the most credible person for getting through this crisis.

There is a great deal more work at access to information, because of the Liberal sponsorship scandal. That is the message the commissioner wanted to leave us with. My colleague got that clearly. The Liberal Party—not the Government of Canada—is trying to do away with the best tools for resolving the crisis, in the name of transparency.

I have a great deal of trouble understanding the Prime Minister. He sends out this message of transparency, but then ends up not giving the access to information commissioner sufficient resources. As a result, requests pile up year after year, until there is now an 18-month backlog. More than 2,000 requests have accumulated, but the situation is being allowed to continue.

This is not being done because it is the best way to provide Canada with good governance, but rather because it is the best way of extricating the Liberal Party from this scandal of its own making, which has resulted in even more access to information requests. The commissioner has made no attempt to hide this. When I asked whether he had had more requests since the Auditor General started reporting on the sponsorship scandal, he answered that yes, there was clearly an increase of between 25% and 35% yearly. He has to live with this, but he does not like it. I understand, neither do I.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know why the opposition wishes to convert the issue of the expiry of Mr. Reid's appointment to other political issues, but the hon. member in his remarks referred to the applications being made to Mr. Reid. In fact, applications for access to information are made under the existing statute to the departments involved. All of the departments have bureaucracies created and managed to provide the information that is requested under the terms of the act. All of that is going on. It is not like we are reinventing access to information here.

The hon. member has personalized this, in the sense that Mr. Reid has become the focus of the whole access to information exercise. I would like to ask him to consider whether or not we should be distinguishing between the person and the office.

Mr. Reid's appointment is expiring. It was a seven year appointment. It was intended to be a lengthy appointment. That is what the statute provides for, to give sufficient time for the appointee to get into the office, to bring about good management, and to work through more than one Parliament. That is what Mr. Reid has done in an exemplary fashion.

For some reason the opposition wants to extend it for a year. The opposition has not really explained why it would want to extend an appointment for just one year. A reappointment might be rational, but extending it for one year might not. It is not clear to me, so I would ask the hon. member to focus on the issue here of extension.

The hon. member also referred to extending a contract. This is not a contract. This is a seven year appointment by the government for Parliament. It is not a simple contract that can be extended. Could I ask the hon. member to address those two issues?

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my friend from Scarborough—Rouge River for his question. I am a little surprised to hear this from him. I recognize his intellectual rigour, but I can see that when his Liberal partisanship rises to the surface, he loses some of it. That is troubling.

He was present at all the meetings when the commissioner came and told us that there was a work overload in his office, since the sponsorship scandal among other things, and he needed more money. Now the hon. member cannot understand why Parliament is being asked to reappoint the commissioner. It is simple. We feel that he is the person most suited to do this work. We do not understand how someone new, more junior, could take over in mid crisis.

We are responsible, as members of Parliament, for making recommendations to the House of Commons regarding access to information and the other committees. I thought that this would have been obvious, even for him. But when Liberal partisanship enters the scene, I can understand that he loses a bit of his intellectual rigour and would prefer, for political reasons, that Mr. Reid was not there because of all the reports he has issued that were very hard on the government.

We think, on the other hand, that he is probably—and increasingly so—the person most suited to handle this office. I should say in passing that this is one office in which the citizens must have confidence. This is where they direct their requests for information. I agree that each department provides the answers. I understand what my hon. friend is trying to say. However, it is still the Information Commissioner who oversees it all, who makes the requests and who ensures that all the answers are given and that in the end, everything that is on file has been turned over to the taxpayer, the journalist, or the member of Parliament who made the application.

I cannot really understand, therefore, why they are saying now that the commissioner's appointment should not be renewed. Maybe the hon. member is wondering why we want another year. If he wanted to suggest renewing the appointment for seven years, I think that he would have the unanimous support of the members of this House. If he wanted to renew the appointment for seven years, it would not be a problem. I think that he would only need to ask. If this were the purpose, it would be fine. Maybe he can make a suggestion to us during the day. We will be pleased to agree.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this concurrence motion of the committee report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. The report recommends the extension of the term of the Information Commissioner for one more year.

Before I get into my comments, I want to know why the words “corruption,” “bribery,” “scandals,” “cover-up,” “culture of secrecy” and all these other terms have been used by the opposition members so frequently. This is to let members know that as long as those terms are not directed at an individual member or to a member of the other place, the rules of this place allow that to happen.

It is unfortunate. Those statements that are made in this place are the same statements that they could not walk outside the door and say in public without being subject to prosecution under the laws of Canada. It is in my view a very unfortunate circumstance where members of Parliament will use the protection of this place to say things that they would not otherwise say outside.

The Access to Information Act came into force in the early eighties. It is an act that has not been substantively changed since that time. I do not think that there is any member in this place that would suggest that it does not need to have a thorough review by Parliament. The public and all stakeholders, including those who are currently exempt from the act and who may be coming under the purview of the act, would have an opportunity to have input as to why there may be exemptions. There are a number of exemptions now.

I would like to briefly outline the purpose of the current Access to Information Act. It states:

The purpose of this Act is to extend the present laws of Canada to provide a right of access to information in records under the control of a government institution in accordance with the principles that government information should be available to the public, that necessary exceptions to the right of access should be limited and specific and that decisions on the disclosure of government information should be reviewed independently of government.

There have been some suggestions made here. As a matter of fact, when I walked outside the chamber and greeted members of the public, they said they had heard about this debate going on. They said they heard that we were firing the Information Commissioner.

It is amazing, depending on the words that people use, because it appears to be something that indeed is not. The fact is that the Information Commissioner is an officer of Parliament, as are the Auditor General, the Privacy Commissioner, and the Official Languages Commissioner. All of these positions are special officers of Parliament.

These officers are appointed for certain terms, a stated number of years. They cannot be simply taken out of that position for some administrative reason or other. They have total independence. I think members would agree that the current Auditor General has often been in a position where she has been very critical of certain things that happened within the administration of government. That position cannot be suspended and the Auditor General taken out of the role.

In fact, to get rid of an officer of Parliament requires a debate in the House and a vote by both chambers. It is an extremely important process. These are very important positions in terms of the support to the governance of Canada.

There can be no question that once someone has been honoured to be appointed to one of these positions that their credentials and abilities go totally unquestioned.

We have had an incident where an officer of Parliament was found to have done some things which were inappropriate. He ultimately resigned from this place without there being a vote on it. I want to make it very clear that as far as I can hear from the commentary of members in this place and from other stakeholders, as it were, Mr. Reid, whose term comes due this month, has performed his duties admirably and with distinction. That is not in question.

If the situation arises where there is an officer of Parliament whose term is coming due and there is no specific provisions within the act for an extension, there could be reappointment for another full term. I do not believe that has happened before. It is a very significant commitment for someone in his or her career. Certainly, the people who take on these roles as officers of Parliament have very distinguished careers elsewhere. Whether it be in politics, or as in the Auditor General's case, in the professional accounting field, they have earned high recognition in their field of endeavour and, to their credit, the accolades of their peers for excellence.

When an officer of Parliament is appointed and knowing the process that we now go through, there is no question about the merit of that individual.

There is another aspect to be considered here. An officer of Parliament's position is coming due and there is this instantaneous motion to extend it for a year, right at the time when the appointment is to expire. The timing of this smacks of disingenuousness.

I do not think members will be surprised to know that a recruitment for replacements for this position has been ongoing for some time. The process to get to a short list and to enter the formal process of the appointment of the new commissioner is well advanced.

Why is it that right at the point the process is to move forward, there is a suggestion that we had better extend the appointment for a year? I question the timing. It is very peculiar and unusual for this to happen, because there has been a commitment that an election would be called in this place within 30 days of the tabling of the final report of the Gomery commission.

Depending on the timing of various things, it is very likely that somewhere around the end of this calendar year, an election will be called. It means that between now and then it is quite unlikely that anything could reasonably happen with regard to changes in the Access to Information Act. It is also quite unlikely that the House would have an opportunity to have input into the development of legislation and as well, to have it go through the normal legislative process within six to nine months in any event, if there was full cooperation, but I can say that there are some very important discussions and debates to be held on this.

In my view, it would appear that the earliest a bill could be dealt with on this very, very important matter would be at least another year to two years to get it through all stages. That means should there be an extension of the current commissioner's appointment, he may very well be in that position for the next year, but he would not likely be involved to any great extent in shepherding any legislation through this place.

Maybe the motion should have been a renewal of the commissioner's position as an officer of Parliament for another term under the prescribed form. It is not to say that there is not other candidates who, given their current roles in life, may wish to make a commitment for a significant period of time.

Those kinds of things do not fit into everybody's plans, whether it be their professional or their family plans. It is an important responsibility. It means they have to reside here in Ottawa. A significant commitment has to be made.

I want to pay tribute to John Bryden, our former colleague from Ancaster--Dundas--Flamborough--Aldershot, a riding name that the chair occupants often had difficulty remembering. Mr. Bryden took a lead role in this place for 10 years. I was part of that. He started an ad hoc committee which was internal to our caucus for some time. We opened it up and it became a formal ad hoc task force with representation from all parties in the House. Substantial witnesses, including Mr. Reid, spent a lot of time with us. I must admit that some of his insights were excellent but I did not agree with all of them. It would be a very boring world if everybody agreed on all things.

One of the aspects he thought would be useful to pursue was to combine two officers of Parliament. He wanted to combine the Privacy Commissioner's office and the Access to Information office which deal in very similar domains. There was some disagreement or maybe no consensus as to whether or not combining these two officers of Parliament would be a useful thing to do.

The Access to Information Act is no small act. In the format which I printed it, it is some 26 pages long and includes a number of important sections.

It lays out for instance who can have access to government records. Every Canadian citizen has the opportunity. Any permanent resident within the meaning of the laws of Canada shall have the right and on request be given access to any record under the control of a government institution. There are some exemptions. This was the area in which John Bryden was interested. We are talking about crown corporations and other agencies, et cetera, and I will get to that in a moment.

A request for access to a record under the act can be made in writing to the government institution that has control of the record, and it shall provide sufficient detail to enable an experienced employee of the institution with a reasonable effort to identify the record or the necessary information.

The member for the Bloc may have misspoken when he referred to requests for information going to the commissioner. The role of the Access to Information Commissioner is not to receive communications from Canadian citizens and then start looking for things. There are rules. They exist at virtually every level of government. An individual has to request information directly from the agency, board, department or institution. Within every one of those departments, agencies or institutions, et cetera, there are designated personnel who are required to keep abreast of developments with regard to these matters and to ensure that the provisions of the act are followed.

There are timelines. There is a nominal cost for any request. One request was over one million pages long. I do not know what a Canadian citizen would want with a million pages of documents, but there was a cost and that citizen had to bear the additional cost for the excessive number of pages.

Within the act there are some exemptions. The current act states that the head of a government institution shall refuse to disclose any record requested under this act that contains information that was obtained in confidence from--and now we have third party information--the government of a foreign state or an institution thereof; an international organization of states or an institution thereof; the government of a province or an institution thereof; a municipal or regional government; or an aboriginal government.

There are certain types of information that are protected or are exemptions, but the institution itself may be subject to other appropriate requests for information.

I do not intend to go through the current act. There is an understanding in this place and I think there is a consensus that there are some important amendments for consideration that should be made with regard to the Access to Information Act. Indeed, we have a responsibility as parliamentarians to ensure that legislation remains at current levels. Former member of Parliament John Bryden worked tirelessly to champion these changes or a review of the act. He even rewrote the entire act himself and tabled it as private member's Bill C-462 in the last session of Parliament.

I looked at a speech that Mr. Bryden gave in that Parliament. I thought it would be useful to show the commitment of the former Liberal member of Parliament who worked so diligently for all those years. In his speech of February 24, 2004, he said:

Let me give members a sense of what is the problem. Right now, under the current Access to Information Act, out of 246 crown agencies and corporations, only 49 are covered by the Access to Information Act.

This is very significant. Out of 246 only 49 are covered, which means that almost 200 are not subject to the act. We have to ask ourselves why.

Mr. Bryden is one of the reasons we were motivated to set up the ad hoc committee and to consult with Mr. Reid and others about what we could do. He gave an example. The Atlantic Pilotage Authority is subject to the act. He gave as examples the Bank of Canada, Canada Post and VIA Rail which are not subject to the Access to Information Act.

One could ask if it is important that the Canadian public have access to the Bank of Canada to request copies of certain information. Members should understand that certain things will be exempt. It is going to take some time to deal with these, but in the meantime it is not to say that the government has not been doing anything.

Two things have happened. First was the establishment of a standing committee responsible for access to information. It is an important committee and it is doing good work. The other is with regard to the whistleblowing legislation. That legislation is ready to go through clause by clause study next week. We are close now. Under that legislation there will be broad authorities of all agencies and crown employees throughout the government. Virtually anyone who gets paid by the Government of Canada will have an opportunity to go to an independent commissioner to bring information or knowledge to deal with some of the issues that members have raised in their speeches.

That is an important move forward. The Access to Information Act is a little step further. We are now talking about the Canadian public, citizens and landed residents to have access to information within these various institutions. It is a very important debate.

I thank the member for raising this issue. I am not sure whether or not a modest extension is the most appropriate way to go, but it has been an interesting debate. I hope that as a consequence of this there will be a renewed interest by all members to ensure that we have a good plan to update the Access to Information Act.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question for my hon. colleague regarding something which has been mentioned on a couple of occasions. We have heard members opposite state as one of the reasons for opposition that we are talking about an extension of one year, that this is a seven year appointment and perhaps if we were talking about a reappointment of the commissioner, that would be a different story.

I think every member of the opposition agrees that Mr. Reid is an unqualified success in his role as Information Commissioner. Would the member opposite confirm that the government would agree, should Mr. Reid be willing, to reappoint Mr. Reid for another seven year term? Yes or no?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as a backbencher I do not have that authority, but I am aware that because this appointment was coming due the process has been ongoing to identify possible nominees to be reviewed in the process.

The member's premise is that the current commissioner is a good commissioner, so why not keep him? I think the commissioner has something to say about it. I personally know what his situation is relative to reappointment for another seven years.

Denis Desautels was an excellent auditor general, one of the most revered for his work and his service to Parliament, so why did we not reappoint him as well? The answer is that there are many very honourable and capable people to do these jobs. The commitment that must be made for these very important jobs is a very serious matter and takes into account not only people's personal willingness and the ability to do it but also their family, health and all other comprehensive situations.

I will simply say that this is not a decision for parliamentarians to make unilaterally. This takes some consultation. That consultation should have started a year ago.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the appointment for one year, it is not a novel idea. The government extended the Governor General's term for a period of time.