Mr. Speaker, I cannot justify the Conservatives' approach to confidentiality and access to information. We have just spent an entire week in the House on, and the Speaker had been asked to adjudicate, an issue with respect to access to information that my colleague, the member for Ottawa Centre, raised in the House just yesterday.
We have been spending a tonne of time here as parliamentarians having to fight the government for access to information that we should have had as a matter of right for our being able to do our job.
There is now before the Speaker the question of whether we, as members, have a right to access information about the cost of the government's crime bills. We received a piece of paper yesterday, but, unfortunately, that paper contained hardly any information, and paper alone is not good enough.
We have asked for and not yet received appropriate projections of the costs of corporate tax cuts.
Members will remember only too well the seminal ruling given by the Speaker on the issue of members' access to the documents pertaining to Afghan detainees. Of course, there is another issue as well regarding who said what, when and where about the funding cuts to KAIROS, another matter for the Speaker to adjudicate.
We are taking up an unbelievable amount of time in this House appealing to the Speaker over and over again so that we can get access to the information we require to do our jobs on behalf of Canadians, instead of debating the issues that Canadians care about, such as jobs, pensions and health care.
Yet here we are discussing Bill C-42 by a government that will not share information with us or Canadian citizens and yet is eager to hand that information over to foreign countries. As my colleague pointed out, it is not just any information but information that includes travel plans, car leases and, most importantly, and potentially, the medical records of the people who are travelling. Medical records should never be shared with anyone beyond the patient and his or her doctor, yet the government is opening the books to foreign governments.
There is a huge inconsistency in the way the government deals with the protection of information. It is trying to close its books to us but opening them to foreign governments. I think that point alone is reason enough for every member in the House to vote against Bill C-42.