Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak at report stage of Bill C-2 and to discuss the second group of motions.
There are several amendments which have been withdrawn, but there are a number of amendments of which we are in favour, including my motion, Motion No. 13, and Motion No. 20 which was tabled by a member of the Liberal caucus, the member for Malpeque. I am not going to speak to the motion that the member for Malpeque tabled. He will do that himself.
I will briefly state that my amendment, for which I believe I have the consent of the four parties which are represented in this House, would ensure that clarity is brought to the issue of which subsidiaries are to come under access to information with the amendments that have been brought forth. It was clearly the will of members of the committee, and I believe it will prove to be the will of the House, that it should only be wholly owned subsidiaries of an institution or an agency that are deemed to be government institutions that should come under the various access to information provisions.
Athough it may seem to some members to be a little off topic, but I do not believe it is, I would like to talk about the actual objectives of Bill C-2 as claimed by the government, as compared to the legislation that we actually see before us.
There are a whole series of clauses in Bill C-2 that the government brought forth. In some cases the committee members in their wisdom successfully amended them or removed them entirely to ensure that the objective of true accountability, transparency and independent oversight was in fact achieved through the bill .
Unfortunately, we did not always succeed, neither the four Liberal members, nor the two Bloc members, and in some cases, surprise, surprise, the one NDP member.
We were successful in one area which is terribly important to our parliamentary and constitutional democracy. That is the principle that has existed for some 400 or 500 years, if not a little longer, on constitutional autonomy of the House or of Parliament and of its members.
Unfortunately, Bill C-2 in its original form would have subjugated the constitutional autonomy of the House and of its members to the judiciary. We have a clear parliamentary democracy and a Constitution that states there is such a thing as constitutional autonomy of the House and that the courts are not the proper place to determine the conduct of the House. It is up to the House and its internal mechanisms and internal rules to deal with how the House proceeds to deal with matters of importance and how it will regulate the conduct and behaviour of members of Parliament.
We, the Liberal members, brought forth a whole series of amendments in order to ensure that the constitutional autonomy of the House and its members was not impeded or diminished. Happily, we were able to see those amendments go through. I am quite pleased about that. I hope that 307 other members in this House are also pleased. If they are not pleased, I would suggest they might want to do a bit of reading on the history of constitutional autonomy, what it actually means and the implications if legislation actually diminishes that.
Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have?