Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in this second reading debate, but I am sorry we are here at second reading. I wish the bill had gone to committee before second reading, just as Bill C-11 did in the last Parliament, which was the whistleblower bill.
For some of the members who may not be familiar with the process, if a bill is tabled in the House and we have second reading debate right then, we have a vote on it to give it approval in principle, once the debate is completed and we have heard all members who wish to speak on a preliminary basis. What it does at that point is lock in the general principles of the bill, and those will be untouchable.
The bill then goes to committee where we receive witnesses. The witnesses represent all the stakeholders who will be touched by the legislation and who have input. They may be people within the public service or people who are not in the public service who have a vested interest in the matter. The experts will comment on the practical implementation of the various aspects of the bill.
In my experience, when members of Parliament get a bill after first reading, they do not have a lot of time to do the research necessary on an average bill, and this is a very substantial bill. It is long and it touches a large number of acts, as members have said. It means that the speeches we are hearing today, unfortunately, are speeches about generalities, about titles, about the general purpose of the bill, but not about the substance of it and the operational efficacy of it.
We are talking about high points. We are not talking about the functionality of the bill and the fact that it relates to a large number of bills. We will be touching the Financial Administration Act, the whistleblower bill, which was passed in the last Parliament, the Access to Information Act, the Canada Elections Act and a large number of other bills.
We cannot read the bill in isolation. It does not tell us what we need to know because we need to have the bills that will be amended by this bill in order to see the context in which most of the amendments in here will be made.
The point is that we are going through a process now where we are not really very productive. We are basically laying out some of the points of interest or concern to the various members.
The bill will go to committee. The committee will go through all this process and get a chance to consider it and make committee stage amendments. However, because the bill has passed at second reading, there is a restriction on the extent to which they can amend the bill. They can fine-tune it, but if it has been voted on at second reading, there is a significant restriction on the committee's ability to make changes to the bill, which has been approved in principle in the House.
The alternative would have been to refer the bill to the committee before second reading, before the vote at second reading. That would then empower the committee with the full input of all appropriate witnesses who are expert in terms of various aspects of the law, whether it be the Privacy Act, or the Access to Information Act, or all these other acts with which not every member of Parliament is totally familiar. They can talk generally but not with certitude on the implications of a change proposed in Bill C-2 with regard to one of these acts.
That process, which was used very successfully in the last Parliament, is an opportunity to ensure that the bill is the best bill possible. It is the responsibility of members of Parliament to make good decisions, responsible decisions and informed decisions, having the expert testimony to give us the insights into what the implications of making this change or that change might be. This bill would have had an opportunity to be a much better bill and the confidence level of members of Parliament would have been much higher had they had the opportunity to hear the experts first so they could then start digging into those areas where there clearly was no consensus of the witnesses or maybe among the members.
I wanted to raise that because I think it is an opportunity missed.
I have heard often, and it concerns me a little, that there is a timetable for the bill. It has to be passed before we rise for the summer.
Let me tell the House what happened with Bill C-11, the whistleblowing bill, in the last Parliament, and it was much smaller than this bill. It was introduced in October 2004. It was referred to committee. The committee got it on October 18, 2004, just a couple of weeks later. A little less than a year later, the committee finally reported the bill back to this place. We had report stage and third reading. After that, it went to the Senate and it passed, with the support of all parties, and received royal assent.
It is law in Canada but it is not in force because the bill still has not been proclaimed.
However, we can make amendments to a bill that is not in force. That is why I mentioned to one of the other speakers that, in my opinion, there really is only one new clause to the whistleblower protection. Almost all of the 40 pages of matters relating to Bill 11, which is the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act, are referred to in Bill C-2, the federal accountability act, which in part incorporates a number of amendments.
All of the substantive provisions of providing protection for whistleblowers were in Bill C-11 in the last Parliament. That was passed by Parliament and unanimously supported by all parties. It was the best job we could do with the best advice we had from the broad range and almost a full years of hearing witnesses and negotiating for changes. Our committee did an excellent job of ensuring that we had the best possible bill for Parliament to consider. That is why it passed so quickly after it came back to the House.
There are a couple of other things about the bill. I do not like the idea that the federal accountability act has to meet a certain timetable because it smacks of perhaps a political timetable as opposed to a legislative timetable.
How can we say today that we need to have this bill done by this time when we have not even heard any witnesses? We have no idea whether there are any problems to deal with. We have no idea how long it will take for members to do the necessary work to consider and propose amendments, to debate them and discuss them. How long will it take after it comes back from committee to do report stage motions? Every member of Parliament who is not on that committee, who did not have an opportunity to participate in committee stage amendments, will have an opportunity to propose other amendments. Then we will have third reading and then it will go to the Senate.
There are probably only about 35 or 40 sitting days between now and the scheduled June 23. It is somewhat unrealistic to suggest that parliamentarians should give up their responsibilities and say, “Let's just pass this”. That is not the way it happens. I certainly would not want to vote for a bill on which we had not done the work.
Therefore, there is a sense that perhaps we should be a little more realistic about what we can do to ensure that we get a good bill. In general I think there is support for the whole aspect of improving the accountability, but it is really important that we do the job well, that we make good laws and wise decisions. It takes whatever time that it takes based on the experience we have as we go through the legislative process.
I support the bill in principle, but I very much look forward to having the input from the public service and those outside the public service so we can make Bill C-2 a very good bill.