Mr. Speaker, for the benefit of the New Democratic House leader, who wants to avoid my being able to address issues, let me quote directly from the President of the Treasury Board. The minister had provided a letter, and the member will see that my comments are relevant.
I made reference to the issue of transparency and accountability. Again, I ask my New Democratic friends to listen. This was brought to the committee in that very report. I will skip the first paragraph and go to the second paragraph, which states:
Open data is an important priority for the Government as it increases transparency and spurs innovation and economic growth.
I was talking about open government, transparency, and accountability, which is completely relevant to the report the NDP decided, at a moment's notice, to concur in today.
It goes on to state:
Through its open data initiative, the Government has established foundational elements that enable the effective delivery of a federal open data. Our work with other Canadian governments and with our international colleagues in the G8 and the Open Government Partnership aims to foster consistency and standardization of open data services to the benefit of citizens around the world.
The Government welcomes the recommendations outlined in the Standing Committee's report for improving open data and open data services. They are consistent with feedback received through recent public consultations and will inform the implementation of these activities within the next version of Canada's Action Plan....
That is the action plan that members of the Liberal Party have called into question, everything from the content of the action plan to the excessive tax dollars being used to promote the action plan. Apparently the New Democrats do not have a problem with that.
It continues that it will include:
...mandatory policies for driving the effective release of open data, initiatives to encourage Canadians to unlock the value of open data, and collaborative activities with other jurisdictions to align open data services.
Members should imagine how very important it is to ensure that there is a good sense of communication related to data internally, even between different departments. We often say that it is of critical importance when we set government policy that there is communication between departments. I do not know how many committees I have personally sat on that have talked about the importance of communication and the transferring of critical data. This is one of the things that not only this particular committee but a lot of committees deal with. A number of standing committees, many of which the New Democrats are not allowing to meet, would deal with this type of issue.