Mr. Speaker, as the member knows from the hearings at the foreign affairs committee, this legislation arose out of some criticisms that were made about the current Canadian legislation by the OECD in its report in 2008.
We heard testimony from a number of witnesses, including Ms. Janet Keeping, president, Transparency International Canada, that this legislation addressed those criticisms that were raised in the OECD report. That was also reiterated and confirmed by government officials who had drafted the legislation based on the OECD report.
It does address the outstanding issues with our current Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act. In addition, the government has created the special enforcement unit at the RCMP to deal specifically with foreign bribery. There 50 staff members working there, in Ottawa and Calgary. There are also special legal experts at the Department of Foreign Affairs and at other departments, such as the Department of Justice, who are made available to the RCMP and all government departments to deal with allegations of foreign corruption.
There is always more that can be done. The Prime Minister made a very important announcement on transparency in London last week, and legislation will be coming forward with respect to requiring Canadian companies to disclose what payments they make to foreign governments.
There is always more that can be done. We are certainly open to suggestions from that hon. member, his party and any international organization that sees a way we can improve our legislation. Of course, this is a key to Canada succeeding as a trading nation. Canadians can compete fairly and succeed, they do every day, and we want to enforce that all the time.