Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate your comments and interjection.
I want to assure all members that in my experience through the years I have come to recognize that privileges are important. The reason so much attention is given to and a lot of discretion is allowed when a question of privilege is raised is so the member who raises the issue feels comfortable enough to adequately express what he or she believes is important to say. That is the spirit in which I raised point today.
I was present when the NDP House leader raised the privilege. I have had the opportunity to listen to many speeches regarding Bill C-38 and issues related to privilege.
The timing of my standing right now is critically important. Mr. Speaker, you have the power to make a difference in terms of what is going to happen over the next period of time. The Liberal Party as an entity, from what I understand, has not had the opportunity to express its thoughts on the privilege which the New Democratic Party member brought forward.
In the best way that I can, I will try to keep my comments short and concise, but I want to make sure that people understand why I feel it is so important and where I am coming from in regard to addressing this issue.
First and foremost, all members of Parliament have an important responsibility. Our constituents want to know that we are doing our job. Part of that job is what takes place on the floor of the House of Commons. We do our job in many different ways.
The privilege to which the member made reference is in regard to information that we have not been able to access. Not having access to information seriously impacts on our ability as members of Parliament to make good decisions.
The public has a great deal of interest in what we do inside the House. I always like to cut it down to two or three things. One of those things is the budget.
The Government of Canada spends a lot of money, in excess of $250 billion. As parliamentarians we have a responsibility to try to understand the kind of money that is being spent. We also need to be able to obtain information that the government has talked about in putting together its budget to present to the House. I could give a specific example in terms of my own critic portfolio. It is a relatively small expenditure, but it is an important expenditure which has a profound impact. That is why I say information is critically important. We ask the government to provide numbers and to tell us what type of offices are going to be closed down. We ask what impact it is going to have in terms of tax dollars.
There have been some significant changes in immigration. I want to cite a specific one. The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism made an announcement not that long ago, in which he said that the government wants to deal with the immigration backlog. In wanting to deal with the immigration backlog, he referred to skilled workers. He said that workers who had applied through the skilled workers program prior to 2008 were going to be deleted from the data banks. The government has put money aside that ultimately is going to be used to reimburse the landing and processing fees.
In looking at that, we say that we are debating a very important bill on the budget and we need specific information related to that. How do we know that the numbers mentioned by the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism actually represent adequate compensation for those individuals? One could argue, as I have, that particular policy announcement was a cruel thing to have done, but at the end of the day, if we read the budget bill that we are expected to vote on intelligently, we need to have some very important information, and I am not convinced that information has been provided to us.
Let me use the example of someone from the Philippines who five years ago put in an application. According to this budget bill, the government is going to return that person's application fee and processing fee or landing fee. I am not 100% sure, but is important information to have. The government, with the passing of this budget bill, is going to be reimbursing those fees. If we look into it more deeply—