Mr. Speaker, I really appreciated the idealistic tone of the speech by my colleague opposite. It is important for those watching us today to truly understand what has happened.
A Conservative member introduced a bill that will allow the public to find out exactly how much money all federal employees making more than $188,600 are paid. He believes that this could lead to greater transparency in the public service and government agencies. We might think that he would have the support of his party, which was elected on the promise of transparency. Despite this reassuring tone, that is not at all the case.
On the contrary, his party let the member go ahead, the bill proceeded and, when the time came, the order was given to simply torpedo the bill, just like in a game of Battleship. When the bill was studied by the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, all the Conservative committee members calmly raised their hands, without a word of explanation, and gutted the bill. They changed the wording so that only 1% of the public service—those earning more than $444,661 a year—would have to disclose their earnings. That is an absolute farce.
My colleague, the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, who I imagine was quite baffled, suggested that we rename the bill to better reflect its content. He suggested that it be named “An Act respecting the transparency of public servants earning more than $444,000 a year, with the exception of PMO employees”. I appreciate my colleague's rigour and concern for accuracy. We must call a spade a spade.
The last few months have been very difficult for the government. There have been major missteps and blunders, which generally indicate the end of a party's reign. The evolution of the bill is itself one of the Conservatives' major blunders.
Everything that elected Conservatives say they stand for, all the principles that they claimed as their own when campaigning and wanted to defend by putting their name on the ballot and asking for their neighbour's support, the very reasons they came to Ottawa for the first time as parliamentarians and proudly took their seats, all these principles are today back on the table. They are being called into question; they have been violated. It is shameful.
I am not questioning the good faith of most of my colleagues opposite. On the contrary, I put myself in their shoes, and I wonder how they might explain what happened here to their constituents or their base. On what basis can they justify and accept the government's actions in this case? There is some cause to wonder. There are some grounds for serious doubts, right?
No, that does not seem to be the case, since the Conservative members knew that one of their own wanted to introduce a bill on the disclosure of salaries of public servants and federal agencies. This is something that many of them would have probably supported, but they knew that there was an order from above, probably from the famous little boys in short pants running around in the Prime Minister's Office. We now know that they kept a close watch on everything that was going on in Ottawa to neutralize the provisions of the bill that amended the Privacy Act in order to allow for the disclosure of salaries.
This was to be a quick and dirty job, done discreetly and swiftly. Furthermore, the member who had the thankless task of proposing amendments to gut the bill, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville, whom I have to name here, did not even bother to explain himself or defend his position. He had to know that he was doing something that did not smell quite right. He clearly did not try to draw attention to his actions.
Moreover, all the Conservative members here fell in line and voted for the amendment. That said, all this was done in silence. No member bothered to speak. There are some things you just cannot talk about.
The government loudly and constantly claims to speak on behalf of taxpayers. However, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation expressed its disgust—yes, its disgust—at the government's actions on this front.
The federation's representative, Gregory Thomas, had this to say after a close look at Bill C-461: “Not one witness, nor one committee member even spoke to why increasing the threshold was a good idea. Probably because they couldn’t think of even one good reason.”
According to him, “Canadians expect openness from the Harper government, not cover-ups and stonewalling.”
He went on to say, “This is another example where the government is not walking its own talk when it comes to accountability.”
In closing, he stated that, “In light of recent scandals, we need more information and accountability from this government, not less.”
He was right when he said that not one witness supported the idea of increasing the threshold for disclosure. On the contrary, those very witnesses, including the Office of the Information—