Mr. Speaker, I rose on April 26 to bring attention to a growing problem that weakened the democracy of our country, and that is the current government's increasing secrecy, lack of transparency and obstruction of presentation of information. This is a deliberate chill that it is placing on the civil servants and civil society and one that is very unhealthy for our democracy. Instead of getting an answer about my question, I received some pontification about the gun registry.
Therefore, I will first spend some time addressing the question I raised.
The government has a track record of thumbing its nose at the public and the transparency that it promised to the public. I refer to the Information Commissioner, who recently commented that there was a lack of will on the part of the government to be transparent and that Canada was no longer an information leader. She recommended legislation to force the government to comply with requirements to prevent delays in the release of public information.
It is worse than that because the government not only obfuscates and delays, it is breaking its own laws. In one of the worse offences, the office of the former public works minister stopped the release of a 137-page report that had been requested by an applicant to ATIP, ordering the public service officials to unrelease this report after the access to Information office at the department had okayed it.
We have a worrisome trend here. Beyond that, the government is actually hiding information that it statutorily is required to release. This brings me back to the gun registry. A report on the gun registry, which the government must, by law, table, was held until after a vote on the gun registry.
Let us discuss a bit further why the members opposite are promoting an action that flies in the face of the evidence of the police chiefs, the police associations that represent the police members and the police boards that represent the community. All those organizations, as well as a cross-section of organizations across our society, are clear that the gun registry is a vital component and tool in protecting the health and safety of Canadians and the police. On an ideological basis, the government is pursuing a path that is destroying a life-saving registry that society needs and wants.
There is a pattern with the government of firing independent officers of Parliament, ideologically cutting funds to groups and hiding information to promote its own end.
I invite the member opposite to explain to the constituents of West Vancouver why they should want more guns on the streets, which would put their lives at risk as well as the lives of the police officers they value.