Conservatives promised more transparency and more accountability.
When I was in Washington recently, I had occasion to visit the Congressional Budget Office, which was essentially the model that inspired the creation of our own parliamentary budget office. The idea is simply to say that government finances are complex and the government controls the whole ministry.
Contrary to the case with the Americans, which has a pure separation from the executive, the legislative and the judiciary, we separate the elected functions from the judiciary, but our executive sits in the front row. We do not have the same airtight separation, so it is even more important when we have a partisan person controlling it, whether it is treasury or whether it is finance, to be able to give real information in real time to the public so that they can rely on it and know what is happening with their money.
Of all the things we do here, I dare say that deciding how taxpayers' money is spent and how it is accounted for are among the most important.
This group is headed up by the former head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Canadian citizens this, Canadian that. The Conservatives lost track of $3.1 billion in the past few months. So much for giving lessons to other people. That is why it is important that we look at the track record of the Conservatives.
One of the other things the Conservatives promised was a public appointments commission. Do hon. members remember that? I do. They offered only one person who could possibly head that up, a man named Gwyn Morgan. Where does that name reappear? We might notice his name reappearing regularly in everything to do with SNC-Lavalin. Why? He is the chairman of the board.
Fast forward to Arthur Porter: come on down. Talk about public appointments. That is what we would have had with the Conservatives, a lot more Arthur Porters.
In their 2006 platform, Conservatives promised to strengthen the Access to Information Act. Let us look at the facts. This one is worthwhile.
A decade ago, in 1999-2000, the federal access to information system disclosed all the requested information over 40% of the time. By the time the Liberals had finished messing with the system, it was down to 28%. However, members should listen to this: it has plummetted by almost half again. In 2009-2010, the last full reporting year—and it has become even worse since then—in only 15% of cases were citizens were getting the information they are asking for.
That is the Conservative government that preached transparency and preached accountability.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
This is the same Prime Minister who promised Canadians that he would “never appoint senators”. That is a promise he has broken exactly 59 times, a record in terms of appointments to the Senate, and we see what sort of quality we have. When they get caught defrauding taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, it is the Prime Minister's Office, backed up by a million-dollar slush fund, that starts cutting cheques to shut them up. That is quite a lesson in transparency and accountability.
They promised that an ethics commissioner would be responsible for both sides of the House. Obviously, they never followed through.
What could be easier and more important than to show respect for the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer?
As several speakers have clearly shown, since this happened—as they will ignore anything that does not come directly from the elves in the Prime Minister's Office—they will withhold funding and refuse to comply with the parliamentary budget officer.
Bill C-476 is intended to revitalize and protect this institution for one single purpose: to protect the public interest and the public's right to know.