Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a great honour to rise and represent the people of Timmins—James Bay.
I am very proud to support my colleague from Winnipeg Centre on this bill dealing with the right of Canadians to access information. This is not a policy-wonk issue. This is about ensuring the government is held accountable to the people, and not as is the case of the government, where the people are supposed to be somehow accountable to the government, with its widespread snooping that we know is going on across the country.
The principles of this bill are very straightforward. In 2014, it almost sounds radical, in terms of a government that is so obsessively opposed to ensuring that the officers of Parliament have the tools they need to ensure any levels of compliance in following the laws of this country by the government.
We will go through the principles that the bill lays out. The principles are to give the Information Commissioner the power to order the release of documents, and to expand the coverage of this act to all crown corporations, offices of Parliament, foundations, and organizations that spend taxpayers' money or perform public functions. It is to consider the exclusion of cabinet confidences. The government says all the time, “Oh, you cannot see those documents. They belong to our cabinet”. The bill would have them reviewed by the Information Commissioner to see whether or not those exclusions are fair. It would oblige public officials to create records to document the decisions that the government makes when it decides it is not going to release documents. It would provide a general public interest override for all exceptions, so that the public interest is put before the secrecy of government. It would also ensure that all exemptions from the disclosure of government information are justified only on the basis of the harm or injury that would result from the disclosure, not simply blanket exemption rules.
The world where Canada was once a world leader in access to information and accountability for citizens is now behind Russia, Colombia, the gangster state of Honduras, and Nigeria, in terms of its citizens getting access to information. It has fallen year after year.
These recommendations sound almost radical, very reformist, but these five recommendations were the five promises made by the Conservative Party in the 2006 election. These were the first five promises that were broken by the government.
When we look at this, we can see why the Conservatives set out, after misrepresenting themselves and telling the Canadian people that they would stand up to end the culture of secrecy in Ottawa, to break those promises first. By excluding information, creating black holes of documents in ministerial offices, and continually obstructing the work of the officers of Parliament, the government has been able to create an unprecedented level of obstruction, secrecy, political misinformation, and just plain thuggery.
The Canadian people need to understand that the officers of Parliament are the referees, the ones who make sure that the government plays by the rules. Yet, we see unprecedented attacks, ensuring that the officers of Parliament do not have the ability to challenge whatever the Prime Minister and his thuggish minions decide.
The former parliamentary budget officer, Kevin Page, was attacked and undermined. We see the government even attacking the head of the Supreme Court of Canada. We see that attack on Marc Mayrand, Elections Canada. We see the insinuation and the lies that are told about people who protect the interests of the Canadian people.
Let us look at what has happened under the government. I will talk about the recent report, released just a few weeks ago by Suzanne Legault, on the interference and the breach of law by Conservative staffers in interfering with the quasi-constitutional right of Canadians to get information.
This is what Suzanne Legault says in her report about the government:
The Access to Information Act is the legal framework that confirms a quasi-constitutional right of citizens to access government information and establishes an objective and non-partisan process for obtaining that information.
The integrity and neutrality of the access system depends on strong leadership from the top.
Well, they are obviously not going to get that from the government.
Ministers and senior managers must ensure their employees know their responsibilities with regard to access to information, and the limitation of their roles. Political and institutional leaders must ensure that their organizations follow the policies and procedures governing...access....
What Suzanne Legault found in her report was that political staffers Sébastien Togneri, Marc Toupin, and Jillian Andrews interfered with the rights of Canadians to get information; that the ministerial staff testified that they were aware that they did not have the delegated authority under the act to interfere with the information; that they also were aware that those with delegated authority had made the decision to release documents to the public because it was in the public interest; and that despite being aware of these facts, these political staffers in the Conservative Party undermined the law, by refusing and overriding the delegated authorities in the civil service, to keep the documents suppressed. According to Commissioner Legault, this was part of a culture of keeping the minister happy.
What we see now, and this is where this gets into the unaccountable world of the government, is that the commissioner does not have the legal authority to press fines or to hold these political staffers to account for the possible breaking of the laws of Canada. No, she has to go to the minister and ask the minister to decide whether the minister will hold the his or her own staff to account.
The Information Commissioner has written to the minister saying that these five files on which the commissioner has concluded there was interference will be forwarded to the appropriate body. The appropriate body is the RCMP, because we are talking about crimes committed in a minister's office. What does the minister respond?: “it would not be a prudent use of the RCMP's limited resources to refer these...files to them”.
We have a minister daring to speak on behalf of the RCMP about crimes committed in her own office.She says that it is not prudent, because the RCMP does not have the time to look into it. That is the notion of accountability in the government, which is that it is okay for Conservatives to break the rules, that it is okay for them to break the laws. They will choose to speak for the RCMP on whether laws have been broken, based on political expediency. It would not be prudent, they say. The Information Commissioner has to ask the people who committed the crimes, who oversaw this in their own office, to see if they will turn it over to the appropriate authorities.
This is a far cry from another promise made by the Prime Minister to the Canadian people, which he broke, and it is probably one of the most cynical statements that has ever been made. He said, in 2006,
There's going to be a new code on Parliament Hill. Bend the rules, you will be punished; break the law, you will be charged; abuse the public trust, you will go to prison.
He did not tell us, though, that he only meant it if one is a Liberal. If one is a Conservative who breaks the rules, he or she will be promoted. If a Conservative breaks the law, he or she can work right in the Prime Minister's Office, perhaps as his lawyer or one of his chief advisers. If one is a fraudster like Bruce Carson, one could actually get promoted and work in the Prime Minister's Office.
This is the culture of contempt Conservatives have for the Canadian people. It comes down to one of their fundamental pillars, which is their ability to retain secrecy. We see situations now where the Department of National Defence says that it is perfectly okay to refuse to allow documents to be released for at least 1,000 days. Other documents are simply blacked out page after page.
This is not democratic accountability. This is not in any way meeting the basic tests laid out in the laws of Canada. We see a government that believes it is above the laws of Canada. We will talk later today about the Conservatives' online snooping. We find now, contrary to the laws of this country, that every 20 seconds, someone from a government agency picks up the phone and demands information on Canadians, and they get it, for whatever reason.
The bill is about whether the Conservatives lied to the people of this country in 2006. They made these promises. This was part of their election platform. We are saying that they should stand up on the promise they made to the people in 2006, or my God, how far they have fallen.