Mr. Speaker, first of all, many facts in the member's statement leading up to her question are clearly wrong. This proves that the Bloc is useless and has done nothing all the years it has been in Ottawa.
I welcome this opportunity to stand in my place and speak on the record of the government on access to information.
Access to government information allows Canadians to better understand the actions their government takes and to hold their elected officials accountable for those decisions. Accountability depends on knowing the information and options available to the government decision makers.
The government was elected to restore accountability and rebuild trust. That is why we introduced the Federal Accountability Act, which of course is the toughest anti-corruption law in Canadian history. The act strengthened access to information. It addressed the need to make government more transparent after years of Liberal corruption and backroom hijinks.
We expanded the Access to Information Act to include agents of Parliament, five foundations created under the federal statute, seven additional parent corporations and all subsidiary corporations. That is over 70 institutions in total and includes other organizations like the Wheat Board, the CBC and the agents of Parliament; 70 new organizations that were previously not covered by access to information but now are. We brought in only one new exclusion that was not previously in place and that was one that was asked for by the Auditor General on draft audits.
This is the biggest expansion of access to information rights for the Canadian people in a generation. Our record stands for itself. We are committed to promoting openness and transparency.
Let me turn to the coordination of access to information requests system, CAIRS. CAIRS is an internal database that was used by the previous government to contravene the very principles of openness and transparency for which this government stands. CAIRS was designed as an internal government tool to facilitate coordination of access requests made to government institutions. It is a database containing information on the requests, including the category of the requester and the text of the request.
The truth is that CAIRS was used by the previous government to control the flow of information. That is not my opinion; that is the opinion of leading experts on access to information. One leading expert said, “CAIRS is the product of a political system in which centralized control is an obsession”.
CAIRS was not designed as a tool to inform the public. In fact, Canadians had to specifically request information through ATI in order to get it when CAIRS was in place. That is probably why so few made the effort to use this tool. In fact, only 13 Canadians in total requested the information on a regular basis.
Furthermore, reporting was inconsistent and the information unreliable. Not only was the system not open to the public, when Canadians accessed information through ATIA requests, they could not even have confidence in the information they received and its accuracy.
My case speaks for itself.