Mr. Speaker, the first question the member poses is with regard to the recording of meetings between lobbyists and public office holders. I will explain to him why this is so important.
The accountability act stipulates that lobbyists must report every meeting they have with a public office holder and that the records of those meetings, date, time and frequency, will be published on a website so that the public knows who is influencing the government. What if we had a health minister that met 150 times in one year with a tobacco industry? I think the public would want to know about that. We want to know who is influencing our government.
As for his particular question, would groups like the National Citizens' Coalition and the Sierra Club be forced to register all their meetings with particular public office holders? Generally speaking, we are talking instead about lobbyists who are paid and have a commercial interest in advancing a public policy cause, which is distinct from advocacy groups which generally advocate in favour of broader principles such as environmentalism or accountability, depending on the group.
The second question related to protection of whistleblowers. There is nothing in this law that would specifically restrict the ability of a public servant to speak out on matters of public policy. All the rights that currently exist for public servants to do that would continue to exist after the passage of the accountability act. However, it would specifically protect public servants who expose wrongdoing. The act is very specific in how it defines wrongdoing.
In other words, a public servant would not be able to use this act as justification for blocking a government's agenda, a public policy decision, but rather would be able to speak out if he or she witnesses waste of public funds, infraction of rules that have been passed by the House of Commons, violation of policy, and a whole series of other clearly defined acts of wrongdoing. Those would be protected disclosures. This law seeks to give an independent watchdog the power to protect public servants who make those disclosures.