Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise and speak about the Group No. 2 amendments on access to information.
I will give an example of what new access to information rules could be.
What I am going to say might not seem entirely appropriate at first, but the pieces of the puzzle will fall into place as we go along. It is entirely the kind of problem related to the passage of Bill C-2 and the fact that there is a lack of a broad approach to create a modernized and strengthened Access to Information Act.
As I said earlier and have also said outside the House, the Conservative government is not really interested in modernizing and strengthening the Access to Information Act.
For several years and on a number of occasions, the Bloc Québécois has complained about this act which did not enable us to get enough information about several scandals that occurred over the last few years.
The one that is most talked about, of course, is the sponsorship scandal, just as the ensuing Gomery commission is much discussed.
People have pretty much forgotten the scandal surrounding a major audiovisual production company in Montreal called Cinar Films. Some people remember a bit. Cinar Films was using front men to hide the origins of its scriptwriters.
A government program provided tax credits when scriptwriters were Quebeckers or Canadians. Cinar Films hid the real names of its scriptwriters, most of whom were Americans, used the names of other scriptwriters instead, and pocketed the money from the tax credits.
As I said, they were not Quebeckers or Canadians but always foreigners. In this way, Cinar Films obtained major tax credits worth tens of millions of dollars. On a number of occasions, the Bloc Québécois denounced and deplored the fact that the previous government refused to disclose relevant information. The Access to Information Act, as currently constituted, would not make it possible to get at this information and would not shed light on these matters.
More recently, we were unable to learn the reasons why the Minister of Justice had decided not to prosecute Cinar Films and its founders for copyright violation, when there was an RCMP report recommending the opposite. It will be clear why the Bloc is questioning the Access to Information Act, and why it wants to see amendments or new provisions that might have been included in Bill C-2 and were not.
We would have liked Bill C-2 to include provision for getting information about Cinar Films, for example. We would have liked to get information from the justice department to learn why it had not initiated proceedings when the RCMP recommended that it do so. We are also wondering, even today, whether this government intends to make these amendments in a different bill, and quickly, so that the public can have access to this information. This is not in Bill C-2.
Because this is an issue, does the new government, the new justice minister, intend to bring a criminal prosecution against Cinar Films, as the RCMP recommended? Now that we have changed justice ministers and governments, this is something that might be considered.
This makes it clear that this has everything to do with an access to information act, it has everything to do with amendments that could have been made to Bill C-2. Unfortunately, this government is doing things too fast, too quickly; it is bulldozing this through. As I said earlier, it is setting a record. I think that this is the bill that will have been passed the fastest after going through each of the stages.
We are not talking about bills that are fast tracked through on the same day. This is the first time we have seen a bill get passed this fast, and heard so many witnesses in so little time, and sat for so many hours in a day and so many hours in a single week.
The Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics has hardly met at all, itself. I think that it sat for a total of five hours during this session, meaning since the last election.
We therefore really do not see how this government thinks it will enact any real access to information regulations, a real access to information act. We are just making cosmetic changes to an act that is called the Accountability Act, but that is ultimately missing one big piece: a revised Access to Information Act and a transparency act. Accountability is all well and good, but if there is no transparency along with it, it cannot get very far, it cannot really serve its purpose. There is nothing to give an act like that its full force and momentum.
I will say again that the time spent getting this bill passed will truly be a record. I do not believe that this is in the best interests of the people of Quebec and of Canada. Rather, I am of the opinion that if a job is worth doing it is worth doing well.