Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of my constituents in Surrey North to speak to Bill C-461, the CBC and public service disclosure and transparency act. Bill C-461 is a blatant attack on the CBC's ability to remain competitive and independent, which the Conservative government has tried to cloak with language of “transparency”. The Canadian public will not be served by the changes proposed by this bill. The only beneficiaries will be CBC's competitors.
How can the federal government, while demonstrating a trend toward greater secrecy and less transparency, ask for exactly the opposite from everyone else? In a stunning display of hypocrisy, the Conservatives continue to demand near limitless disclosure from first nations, labour unions, and now the CBC, while they simultaneously refuse to disclose the number of employees in the PMO who earn over $100,000.
If the Conservative government were truly interested in transparency, it would have supported the original salary disclosure measures in this bill. Instead, during the ethics committee's study of the bill, the Conservatives gutted these provisions by raising the minimum income threshold for full salary disclosure of federal employees from $188,600 to $444,661 annually. This amendment they introduced at committee was designed to effectively neutralize Bill C-461's salary disclosure measures, and rather than supporting transparency, as the name of this bill suggests, the Conservatives are doing exactly the opposite. By gutting the salary disclosure provisions proposed in this bill, the Conservatives are yet again demonstrating their aversion to any measure of true transparency.
I am sure Canadians are wondering why the Conservatives voted to raise the salary disclosure threshold. There must certainly be a valid rationale behind this particular decision. I am sorry to disappoint Canadians searching for this answer. There should be a reasonable explanation from the government, but there does not seem to be one. In fact, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation noted that not a single witness nor committee member even spoke to why increasing the threshold was a good idea. I have to say that I agree with the director's prediction that this was probably because the Conservatives could not think of even one good reason to justify their action.
The Conservatives are demonstrating that they are nothing if not consistent in this position. Over the past few months, we have seen in the House their attempts at evasion and cloaking the truth. Even independent transparency experts have criticized the government for its deteriorating commitment to transparency. How can we be expected to work toward transparency when the government is unable to set a good example of what that should look like? Why should we settle for transparency for everyone except the Conservatives? On this side of the House, we believe in a regime of transparency and accountability that applies fairly to all aspects of the federal government. This is clearly not a view shared by my colleagues across the aisle.
I am sure we can all agree that it is of the utmost importance that the CBC remains accountable to Canadians. However, it is also important that CBC be able to protect its journalistic programming and creative activities in order to perform and deliver in this marketplace. This bill would make protection of that information significantly difficult and would threaten CBC's competitiveness and ability to produce investigative journalism.
It is important to acknowledge, first of all, that the CBC has taken measures to improve its access to information operations dramatically. In fact, the information commissioner remarked in her 2011-12 report cards that CBC had “achieved an outstanding level of compliance” and awarded the CBC an A grade for its performance under the Access to Information Act.
Furthermore, the CBC proactively discloses information to the public beyond what is required. The CBC's improvement in this area is even more impressive when compared to the federal government's own appalling performance in this regard.
The amendments in this bill would repeal the exclusion from the Access to Information Act of CBC's information that is related to journalistic, creative, and programming activities, and instead replace it with an exemption. Under this exemption, the CBC would be required to demonstrate that the disclosure of a record would be reasonably expected to prejudice the corporation's journalistic, creative, and programming independence.
Currently the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada reviews the requested documents to ensure that the information relates to protected activities, and then makes a decision. Under the proposed exemption, the CBC would be required to turn over documents, as well as legal arguments, outlining how the release of the information would cause injury to the CBC.
This would place an undue and unfair burden on the CBC and would open a door to damaging requests, as well as needless and expensive legal battles. There is no other broadcaster that is subject to similar measures.
It is clear that these amendments would seriously threaten the CBC's journalistic operations. The majority of the CBC's access to information requests already come from its competitors. These amendments would only serve to exaggerate the situation and force the CBC to spend more time and effort protecting information relating to journalistic, creative, and programming activities from its direct competitors.
Why would we want to expose our public broadcaster to this extra burden, which would seriously threaten its competitiveness? These amendments are unnecessary. The CBC has already demonstrated excellent compliance with the Access to Information Act, and the Federal Court of Appeal has already settled the matter to the satisfaction of both the Information Commissioner of Canada and the CBC. There is absolutely no need to place an additional burden on CBC, our public broadcaster.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I must point out the hypocrisy of this bill. How is that the Conservatives can expect the CBC to adhere to an even more demanding access to information procedure when they are not performing to the level that CBC is? This is truly perplexing to me.
This bill is a backdoor attack on the CBC, targeting its ability to remain competitive and independent. The Conservatives have demonstrated, with their amendments to the bill, that they are not committed to ensuring transparency on salary disclosure.
I agree that the CBC must remain accountable to Canadians, but this bill would hinder its ability to protect journalistic, programming, and creative activities, which would negatively impact its ability to perform and deliver in the marketplace. I believe that the CBC should remain a strong and independent public broadcaster. The bill demonstrates that the Conservatives clearly do not feel the same way.