Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I take the floor in this chamber. Perhaps I shall succeed, as women often do, in restoring a little moderation to all these discussions.
Let us look first of all at the evolution of this bill. As it is a bill on accountability, one cannot help but be struck by the way that certain powers have been removed from the parliamentary committee by hastening the debate and ending up with certain amendments that will reduce the power of parliamentarians.
As a parliamentarian, I take my responsibilities to heart. The citizens of Trois-Rivières have placed their trust in me. For me, it is important to guarantee democracy in this Parliament. The committees are an important mechanism for achieving that goal.
The Bloc Québécois is in favour of the principle of this bill. For some months now, it has proposed numerous recommendations for improving the current accountability framework.
The Bloc Québécois did its homework and tabled 72 recommendations in the wake of the Gomery commission. Those 72 recommendations were made necessary by all the ethical problems that have been encountered. We wanted to locate the sponsorship money, assign powers and resources to officers of Parliament, amend the Access to Information Act and the Lobbyists Registration Act, and protect whistleblowers. All of these subjects are addressed in this bill—unfortunately, some not so successfully.
For example, consider ethics. Ethics was certainly at the heart of the last election campaign. The sponsorship scandal was revealed by the Bloc Québécois. The Bloc was constantly alerting the public on this subject, and so helped to oust the Liberals from power.
What did the public tell us in electing a minority Conservative government? It told us that this government had to clean up political practices and establish accountability in this Parliament. However, one can wonder why it is necessary to do this so quickly, in such a rush.
The Bloc Québécois has some major criticisms to make about the passage of this bill, which is crucial and much awaited by the population, and which deserved more extensive review. Why the urgency? We have the right to ask the question.
The Gomery commission produced a set of recommendations which have to be implemented: that is certain. However, given all the abuses we have seen, it is clear that the problem is not caused by a lack of rules, but by the fact that those rules are not being followed. Now what does this bill propose to us? It proposes new rules.
In the opinion of the Bloc, the bill has certain weaknesses in this regard, insofar as the process is not clear. This amendment calling for a review every five years, to which the Bloc has just given its support, can certainly provide the beginning of a solution.
In five years, perhaps we will be having the same discussions, to the effect that we have a lot of rules, but no means of preventing the rules from being circumvented and that a review is needed.
Accountability demands a great deal of transparency. One wonders how an abuse can be denounced if it is not known. That is why the Bloc called for a reform of the Access to Information Act. Information is power. For the Bloc, it is important for all information to be accessible. It is also important for all the foundations and crown corporations to be subject to this Access to Information Act.
One cannot be halfway transparent or a quarter or an eighth of the way transparent. When we talk about transparency, we must be sure that everything is on the table so that parliamentarians, and parliamentary committees in particular, can debate it and come up with solutions. Human nature being what it is, we know full well that there will always be individuals who will sneak through the back door. That is how we end up with such significant abuses.
There is another crucial aspect that is very little talked about and that is the real will of the government caucus and all parliamentarians in this House to intervene and change things. I have been a member here in this House for two years now. Judging by a number of bills and committee reports, we find that political will is lacking. Things do not change. Another election is called and we end up dealing with the same problems.
What is more, in this bill, the government refused to increase the penalties for those who contravene the Ethics Act. We feel this lacks transparency and this certainly would have been a way to prevent abuse. It is important for this bill to be debated in this House. It is a shame it is being debated so quickly. Even elected officials from France, on their recent visit to Canada, said they were watching what was going on this House and mentioned that they, too, were having challenges with respect to accountability and that our work could, perhaps, have been used as a model. Nonetheless, it seems we are missing a good opportunity to get to the bottom of things because we are only skimming the surface and moving far too quickly.