I was not here at that time. I am a very recent member.
Another area of parliamentary reform is floor crossing. The NDP, to its credit, brought forward a bill two years ago but it was inadequate. However, I personally brought forward an amendment to the Federal Accountability Act to deal with floor crossing to allow for a limited recall. That would have gone through, even though it was ruled to be out of order, but we had a vote to see whether it could be re-instituted and, unfortunately, the government voted against it. It voted against recall for floor crossing, which is interesting. All members from any party would have been subject by now to that fine provision of parliamentary reform.
I will speak to one other area of parliamentary reform and that is the secret ballot for the chairs of House committees. I think it came from a Conservative resolution when the Liberal government was in power. It was accepted and there were secret ballots for committee chairs. That has been rolled back so that now it is back in the PMO.
We are talking about democracy and all of these things. The trouble is that we cannot just pick and choose, which is, of course, the weakness of Bill C-43. It is piecemeal. It is not comprehensive.
The other issue is public engagement because we are talking about consultations with the public for ideas on who should be appointed to the Senate, which is now done by the Prime Minister at his discretion. Public consultation needs information. A very important part of that information to the public so they can properly be consulted and provide advice to us as legislators is provided through the access to information legislation.
In the last election campaign, the Prime Minister, very broadly, boldly and without any shadow of a doubt, said that the Federal Accountability Act would be the first bill the government would bring forward if he were elected and that it would incorporate the whole access to information draft bill that the Information Commissioner had brought forward at the request of a parliamentary committee.
What was brought forward was just a minor part of it in the Federal Accountability Act. In fact, the Information Commissioner, highly regarded and respected, and actually consulted by all of us, including the present government, for his advice, called the so-called access to information provisions of the Federal Accountability Act retrograde and dangerous. This is our officer of Parliament, now the government, who pledged during his election campaign to incorporate all of his suggested open government act provisions in there.
Let us do this right. If we really see flaws, inadequacies or things that are out of date, we need the courage to say that an unelected legislative body in a modern democracy is an anachronism. I think we all feel that. We need to get together and fix it comprehensively without causing more difficulties rather than solving the democratic deficit of this particular aspect of our democracy.