Mr. Speaker, I listened to some of this debate. It is always interesting to me how sometimes we in this place can take some pretty straightforward, basic information and turn it into something that really does not reflect that straightforward, basic information at all. Talk about patent nonsense, fearmongering and misleading information from the member who just stood up. It is beyond the realm. For the record, I think it is time for full disclosure.
I listen to CBC Radio and I watch CBC television. The hon. member may find that hard to believe. CBC does a pretty good job, but that certainly does not put it beyond the reach of transparency. What is wrong with openness and reasonable and responsible transparency not on personal, highly secretive information, not on giving some other company a corporate advantage, but reasonable and responsible transparency? I think that is really what the hon. member for Edmonton—St. Albert is talking about. If we cannot have that discussion in this place, then are we saying that we do not want transparency anywhere, that nobody, members of Parliament, members of the Senate, members of the RCMP, should ever have oversight in place? Are we saying that no one should ever be checked upon? We are talking about a multi-billion dollar crown corporation. Do we not want to have some openness and some transparency? Do we not want to let the full light of day shine upon certain aspects of how this corporation works? I really question where the hon. member is coming from.
Members on both sides of the chamber know that the Information Commissioner, for instance, is the independent entity that balances the legitimate interests of government in the protection of records and the public's right to know. It is a balancing situation. We just do not kick the doors in and say there is all the information. We take it piecemeal and we look at it, because there is proprietary information, there is information, quite frankly, that should remain private, but there is a lot of information that the public has a right to know.
We are going back to 1983 with the Access to Information Act. This act is three decades old. This is not something that just came through the mill. It is a guiding principle that government information should be available to the public and that any necessary exemptions to the right of access should be limited and specific.
How can the member say that this is some kind of a witch hunt against the CBC? What the opposition is saying about this legislation is incredibly misleading. The bill deals with the CBC, a multi-billion dollar crown corporation that Canadian taxpayers pay for and how access to information requests should be managed.
I will provide the House with a little content, a bit of history, about the corporation before I really discuss the fine details of Bill C-461.
CBC/Radio-Canada began well before the days of television. A lot of members in the NDP would remember those days when Canadian radios were severely lacking Canadian content and coast to coast coverage was not heard of let alone planned for. The CBC, as we know it today, really came into being in 1936 when the Canadian Broadcasting Act created the CBC as a crown corporation. The 1950s brought CBC into the world of television.
The CBC gains a significant amount of its revenue from advertising sales. However, it still receives nearly $1 billion a year from the government and the taxpayers of Canada and that is what separates it from broadcasters whose funding is solely from private sources.
I know that I will have to finish my remarks another time, but to turn now to the relationship between the CBC and the access to information regime, my colleagues will remember that in 2006 our government succeeded in delivering its first major piece of legislation. It was the Federal Accountability Act, which accomplished a number of important things. In short, what we are talking about here is simply reasonable, responsible accountability.