Mr. Speaker, I move:
That, given your finding that a prima facie breach of the privileges of Parliament has been committed by the government for failing to fully provide the documents as ordered by the House, the matter be hereby referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for a final determination on the government's compliance, or lack thereof, and that the committee report back its findings and recommendations no later than March 21, 2011.
Mr. Speaker, I want to begin my remarks by thanking you for your very thoughtful and considerate ruling on this issue of Parliament's right to information. As you know, what is at stake here is nothing less than Parliament's ability to function and hold the government accountable.
Parliamentarians have ordered the Conservative government to provide documents detailing the costs of its U.S.-style prison agenda. Parliament has a right to these documents, as has been pointed out. We need this information to do our jobs as members of Parliament. Under the Canadian rule of law, it is the role of government to propose legislation and the role of Parliament to evaluate that legislation and control the government's purse strings, for in our democracy it is Parliament that has the supreme authority over government spending and as parliamentarians we have a fiduciary obligation to Canadians.
When a constituent asks us how much this legislation just voted for actually costs, we have a moral responsibility and a parliamentary obligation to be able to answer that question. This applies to all members of Parliament, including Conservative members. It is important to note that not only is the government keeping opposition members in the dark as to the cost of its legislation, it is also keeping its own Conservative members of Parliament in the dark.
No one should be complicit in helping the government keep Canadians in the dark. As members of Parliament, it is our duty to thoroughly and publicly evaluate the government's spending plans before allowing the government to spend that money. It is our job to make sure that when the government spends Canadians' hard-earned tax dollars, it is done with respect, transparency and in a way that reflects the priorities of Canadians. That is what Canadians elect us to do. That is why we are here. However, without information, we as members of Parliament simply cannot do our jobs.
We live in a wonderful country, but one that is also facing some very serious and complex challenges. As parliamentarians, we must work to manage these challenges. We have a rapidly aging population with growing demands for health care and other government programs. We have a dwindling tax base due to a demographic shift, a dwindling tax base to pay for those services.
Canadians are worried about their pensions and savings and at the same time Canadians are facing dangerous levels of personal debt. Too many simply cannot afford to retire and too many seniors who have retired are living in poverty. Canadian families from coast to coast to coast are struggling to make ends meet. They face rising food prices and other increasing costs of living.
Although the Canadian economy has had a statistical recovery, we are still facing a human recession. For far too many Canadians, full-time jobs have been replaced by part-time work. Our constituents want the government to invest in health care, family care, education, retraining and pensions. At the same time, they want the Conservatives to be held to account because it is the Conservatives who have spent Canada into a record $56 billion deficit.
Therefore, as parliamentarians we must evaluate all of these competing demands for tax dollars while we put Canada back on a path toward balanced budgets, but we cannot make informed decisions between these competing demands if we do not know how much the government's legislation would cost.
In June of last year, the Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report on how much the Conservatives' truth in sentencing act would cost Canadian taxpayers. He estimated the cost at $1 billion a year for the federal government and, on top of that, more than $1 billion a year in costs for provinces. That is more than $2 billion of Canadian taxpayers' dollars each and every year, which must now go toward building prisons instead of providing hospital beds and hiring nurses.
This is despite the fact that the minister has told us this legislation would only cost $90 million over two years. The $2 billion annual price tag is just one of the Conservatives' crime bills. The Standing Committee on Finance responded to this new information by ordering the government to provide the committee with detailed cost estimates for 18 additional Conservative criminal justice bills.
For each crime bill, the committee ordered the government to provide a breakdown of incremental cost estimates; a breakdown of baseline departmental funding requirements, excluding the impacts of the bills; the total departmental annual reference levels; and, a detailed cost accounting analysis and projections, including assumptions for each of the crime bills conducted in accordance with the Treasury Board guide to costing.
We have asked for these detailed cost breakdowns because Canadians have a right to know and we have a responsibility as parliamentarians to demand.
How much would these crime bills cost? How much does the government plan to pay? Do the Conservatives plan to reallocate existing money within the department? For example, are we going to see cuts to front-line policing and disaster relief in order to pay for bigger prisons, or does the government plan to find the money elsewhere through cuts to health care or education?
The Conservative government still refuses to provide Parliament with these cost breakdowns. The Conservatives continue to falsely hide behind cabinet confidence without even trying to provide an explanation as to why they believe cabinet confidence applies. They will not provide any explanation because they know their excuses are without merit. By hiding this information, the Conservatives are treating Parliament and indeed all Canadians with contempt.
On February 25, 2011, the Parliamentary Budget Officer published a report evaluating the government's response to the finance committee's request for information on the cost of the 18 crime bills. The PBO report states clearly that the Government of Canada has not provided the finance committee with most of the information that it requested.
In that report, the PBO recognizes that Parliament has a right to the information that has been requested and the report states clearly that this information is, “required for parliamentarians to fulfill fiduciary obligations under the Constitution”.
However, the Conservative government refuses to respect the rules and provide the documents on how much the crime bills would cost.
The government did give us the bare bones annual cost for five of the 18 crime bills, but that is it. The government did not provide us with any cost breakdowns, as requested. The government did not provide the baseline departmental funding requirements that were requested. The government did not provide the total departmental annual reference levels that were requested. The government did not provide the detailed cost analysis required by Treasury Board that was requested by the committee. Nor did the government provide any reasonable explanation as to why none of this information could be provided.
This pathetic response from the government is an affront to Parliament and an insult to Canadians. The government is demonstrating contempt of Parliament and disrespect to taxpayers.
We know from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that the financial cost of these bills is in the billions of dollars. We know it is big, but we do not know how big.
As parliamentarians, we find ourselves in the situation where we cannot determine how seriously these crime bills would impact the federal treasury. We cannot make informed decisions between competing demands for money. We do not know how many hospital beds we will be able to afford in the future because we do not know how many prisons the government has effectively committed to build as a result of this legislation. Simply put, we do not have the basic information we need to evaluate the government's books and the government will not explain why it will not provide the documents to Parliament.
Either the government is breaking the rules in order to hide the true costs of its crime legislation from Canadians, or it is a matter of extreme incompetence where the government broke the rules in the first place by never bothering to actually find out how much the crime bills would cost. This is particularly unacceptable at a time when we have a record $56 billion Conservative deficit. Either way, it is clear that the government has broken the rules and is in contempt of Parliament.
Once again, accordingly, and given the finding that a prima facie breach of the privileges of Parliament has been committed by the government for failing to provide the documents as ordered by the House, we ask that the matter be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for a final determination on the government's compliance, or lack thereof, and that the committee report its findings and recommendations back to the House no later than March 21, 2011.