Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak with respect to this group of amendments and the bill generally. The member for the NDP, who preceded me, makes a very good point when he reminds the House of the progression toward the crafting of and the approval of the open government act. It was the draft act produced by Commissioner John Reid, at the request of the House over a year ago, and submitted in the early fall of last year. It came before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, which endorsed it, and that is extremely important, with support from, I think, all parties in the House.
That was moving us toward an expert based, record based experiential amendment of the act, which we have had the experience of working on now for over 23 years in the House and through the Commissioner of Information.
There has been a great deal of discussion over all of this time with respect to how the act is working or is not working, how the public service is reacting to the requirements of the act and whether it seems to be an aggravation to people to disclose information easier kept secret. That is not what we want and that is not what it is intended to do. The intent of the act is that information held publicly, with some exceptions, is public information and should be available.
One of the interesting things about access to information is it not only enriches our democracy by allowing Canadians to know what is being done with their money, and I think all members of the House understand that, subject to some reasonable exemptions. It causes the public bureaucracy to work more efficiently as well. If bureaucrats are required to make available this information on an ongoing basis, then they have to clean up their record keeping. One would hope it would lead to a regular process of simply posting information as a matter of course without citizens having to ask for it.
We learn about the unintended consequences sometimes of these acts and they need to be amended from time to time. Commissioner Reid performed a very worthy service in providing the open government act for consideration by the House. As I mentioned, it was endorsed by the committee.
Then in line with that endorsement, the Conservative Party in the last election made it part of its election campaign to include the open government act, as presented by Mr. Reid and endorsed by the committee, in the accountability act. It would be its first piece of legislation should it be elected. I think that conformed to the will of the House and the expectations of the public.
We are disappointed, as well as the other opposition parties, that the whole act did not appear and we are taking another course. We will be very interested and directly engaged in that discussion in the fall when the opportunity, through another committee, comes to bring up to date the legislation.
Not only have we had this process through the information commissioner and the House committee, but, in a very interesting way, this case come before the courts. The Supreme Court of Canada has endorsed the general concepts of access to information, that there should not be permanent exclusions that do not have exemptions. They would be time limited and there would be some discretionary exemption. In applying this discretion, one should look to exemptions such as personal information, third party information and commercial information. There should be an opportunity for the commissioner to apply some discretion to ensure that there is no injury being caused by that exemption. I suppose the flip side of that, is if there is some injury caused, is there an overriding public interest that should be exercised in favour of disclosure.
The injury test, the discretion of the commissioner, public interest override and to avoid permanent exclusions which allow no discretions to be applied are important principles. Those are interesting aspects which we will have to come to in the fall. We were disappointed they were not in here.
Another interesting issue came about as a result of finding out that one of the leadership candidates for the Liberal Party had received donations from children who were under the age of majority. I think they were 11 or 12 years old. I have very little knowledge of any of the money that is donated to my campaigns. As a matter of practice I usually do not look. I do not want to be directly associated with knowledge of that. It may well be that all members of this House have unknowingly received contributions at some time from persons who are underage.
My colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce--Lachine put forward an amendment at committee that would have made it improper for anyone who had not reached the age of 18, the voting age, to make political donations. It is unfortunate that it did not pass at committee but it is something we should think about in the future. I do not think any of us would want to be given money in the name of minors, which does not actually come from their own funds.
Looking at the motions in Group No. 2, the official opposition will be supporting most of them. We know that two have been withdrawn but we are having a little difficulty with Motion No. 14 which was put forward by the NDP member.
We need to consider in this House whether there is a substantive difference between the Auditor General and an audit, and any other official of Parliament, such as the parliamentary commissioner. They all provide somewhat similar roles. They receive concerns from the public. They can initiate their own investigations. They perform audits, whether it is compliance with the Official Languages Act, the Access to Information Act, the Privacy Act, the Treasury Board directives or other auditing and accounting rules of government.
I am not quite sure of the distinction that is being made by separating out the Auditor General from the others. I gather that the mover of the motion is concerned about the absolute exclusion given to the papers produced in the process of an audit that would apply to the Auditor General for disclosure, that it simply not be permanent and that it be made discretionary but after the audit is complete, as with the other officers of Parliament. I think we may want to hear a little more debate on that one.