Mr. Speaker, the essence of the question is alluding to the notion of the spirit of the accountability act and its incorporation in the accountability bill.
I said earlier that the concern I have is that this is a bill that is lengthy in nature. It lacks a coherent message and does not have a logical flow. Various sections have been excluded. Parts of the Access to Information Act and the recommendations that we made in committee have been excluded and will be put forth in a separate bill that will be going forward to a committee.
My concern is that we had extensively debated those issues. More important, not only did we debate those issues, but we had the full support of the Conservative Party and the Conservative members that sat on the committee with me.
I do not see what has drastically changed now that the Conservatives are in power. Why do they no longer want to pursue those changes and recommendations that we made in committee? We exhausted all possible avenues to the best of our ability. We consulted with the Information Commissioner and took his considerations into account as well. We came to an agreement on some of the changes on which he made recommendations. All that has been done.
I do not see any further value added by taking that particular component of access to information to the committee. Something we have to seriously consider when this bill goes to committee is that we might need to incorporate it to further strengthen accountability.
I have said before that the Liberals have taken a leadership role on accountability. We have done tremendous work on accountability. I look forward to working with the government in making sure that we continue to strengthen accountability and make sure that Canadians have trust in public institutions.