Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand and address Bill C-520 today. I have a few things that I would like to get on the record.
I would challenge the member and the Conservative Party as to why they have felt it necessary to bring forward the bill. As has been illustrated by the New Democratic speaker, the current government has not been a friend to our agents of Parliament, and I think we could come up with a number of examples which would clearly demonstrate that.
Canadians should be concerned regarding the general attitude that the Conservative Party majority has towards agents of Parliament. I think we have witnessed over the last few years an abuse of government power in using that majority to quite often override what our agents of Parliament have been trying to address in the best interest of Canadians.
There are a number of thoughts that come to mind, but first I will highlight what this particular bill is about.
The proposed legislation would do nothing to deal with the elaborate and partisan appointments of the current government. I think that is important to recognize because it is a real problem that the current Conservative government has.
Also, the legislation is an underhanded attack on the agents of Parliament and the people who work in the offices of the agents. The agents of Parliament are reputable individuals, and their personal work and life experiences are communicated and understood during the interview process. This is why I ask why we have the proposed legislation before us today. Is it necessary, given the important issues out there that we all have to face?
We just came back after a summer of being with our constituents. I am sure that members of Parliament worked very hard during the summer in trying to get a good sense of the issues that are impacting their constituents. However, I suspect that no one would have raised the issue that is before us in the bill. Therefore, I question the motivation that the member has in bringing forward the bill.
I have a great deal of respect for the role that our parliamentary officers play on many critically important issues.
A couple of years ago, our Parliamentary Budget Officer provided comment on the old age supplement. The Prime Minister was overseas at the time, when he dropped the bombshell that the government wanted to increase the age of retirement from 65 to 67, which is something that the Liberal Party has been very clearly opposed to.
We believe the government was wrong in changing the age of retirement for OAS from 65 to 67. It was a bad move. We had the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer in essence indicate that Canada could afford to continue on with the age of 65. However, if we listened to what the government was saying, we heard there was some sort of a crisis situation and if it was not increased to 67 from 65 our system would fall apart. We in the Liberal Party knew that was not the case, and we had our Parliamentary Budget Officer indicate that the Liberal Party was correct and that there was no crisis.
That was a couple of years ago, but just this last session members will remember the issue with the Chief Electoral Officer.
Elections Canada is an institution respected around the world as an organization of immense credibility that is not partisan.
I sat through hours of debate and public consultations, where time after time the Conservative government went against this institution, even when we had the Chief Electoral Officer and previous electoral officers before us saying that the actions taken within that legislation were wrong and that the government was making serious mistakes by forcing through the so-called Fair Elections Act, which is far from what that legislation is actually doing.
What did we have at the time? We had a verbal attack against one of our agents of Parliament, one of the offices that are highly apolitical because they do get engaged in partisanship. The government went after that agency. It went after the Chief Electoral Officer himself, imputing all sorts of motives in an attempt to get what it wanted.
Whether it is the Chief Electoral Officer, the Auditor General, the Commissioner of Official Languages, the Privacy Commissioner, the Information Commissioner, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, the Commissioner of Lobbying, or the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, these are very important agents of our parliamentary system. They have a very important role to play in Canadian society. It is one of the ways in which all parliamentarians, whether they are on government benches or on opposition benches, are engaged.
We often turn to the Auditor General of Canada for clarification on important issues. How many times have we had the Auditor General of Canada get engaged with the F-35 contract, the hundreds of millions of tax dollars, actually billions of dollars, when it comes to the F-35 and the debacle that has taken place? We have turned to our Auditor General to try to get a better understanding of those important issues that need to be reported on in an apolitical fashion.
Every year we get reports that highlight inefficiencies and problems the government has not been able to address. Quite often there will be a series of recommendations brought forward, and not just from the Auditor General of Canada but from other agents of Parliament. They are there to improve the system and to ensure that there is more accountability and transparency. Liberal governments in the past acted on the many different recommendations brought forward from these independent agencies.
The government has received numerous reports, numerous recommendations, on everything from the F-35 to the fairness of elections, and it has really done very little, if anything. The government has failed to address those very important issues Canadians want it to address.
Instead, the government has brought forward the piece of legislation before us today, which calls its motivation into question. Why is it this, of all things? If we want to do something--