Debates of Sept. 25th, 2017

Access to Information Act

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to offer a few words about Bill C-58 and its proposed amendments to Canada's Access to Information Act. In fact, I would like to begin with some specific comments about the Information Commissioner's expanded role under these legislative amendments.

Among the many changes we have made in our proposed reform of the Access to Information Act, one that we believe is important, and that the Information Commissioner has herself requested, is for strengthened oversight of the right of access.

Currently, the Information Commissioner has no power to order a government institution to release records that have been requested under the Access to Information Act.

For example, if a requester is dissatisfied with the reduction of records in response to a request, they have the option to send a complaint to the Information Commissioner. This complaint is then investigated, and the commissioner can make a recommendation to the government institution to release the records.

If the institution does not accept that recommendation, the commissioner currently has the option to challenge the decision in court, with the agreement of the requester.

Under Bill C-58, the person would continue to have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner if he or she does not agree with how the government institution responded to the request.

This right would be clearly communicated to the requester as required by the act, but when it comes to the conclusion of the commissioner’s investigation of such complaints, the commissioner would now have the power to issue an order to release the record if she deems it was improperly withheld.

The government institution would have to release the record in accordance with an order from the Information Commissioner or, if it disagreed with the commissioner's order, go to court and convince the court, based on evidence it provided, that it has applied the act correctly.

Mr. Speaker, this is a first at the federal level. Never before has the Information Commissioner had the ability to order the government to release records.

If the head of the institution disagrees with the order, believing, for example, that the record should be withheld for security reasons, Bill C-58 proposes to give the head of the institution 30 business days to ask the court to review the matter.

In short, the new reforms to the Access to Information Act would provide the Information Commissioner with order-making power. This would transform the commissioner's role from an ombudsperson to a powerful authority with legislative power to compel government to release records.

These new powers include the authority to make orders about such things as fees, access in the official language requested, format of release, and decisions by government institutions to decline to act on overbroad or bad faith requests.

To enable the Information Commissioner to carry out this new authority, we will also be providing the commissioner with additional resources.

The improvements we are proposing will reinforce the act's original purpose and respond to the recommendations of the Information Commissioner to strengthen her oversight of the right to access.

The changes to the commissioner's role from ombudsperson to an authority with legislated order-making power will increase the commissioner's effectiveness.

This is a sea change in the way access to information works at the federal level, and we are taking the important step to strengthen government transparency and accountability.

We are committed to modernizing the act and making continual progress towards a more open and transparent government.

To that end, the legislative package we have introduced proposes a new part of the act that sets out proactive publication requirements for all areas of government. This will entrench into law the obligation for the government to proactively publish a broad range of information to a predictable schedule. It will apply across departments and agencies, as well as new areas such as the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices, senators and members of Parliament, institutions that support Parliament, and administrative institutions that support the superior courts and over 1,100 judges of the superior courts.

Making more government information publicly available and on a predictable schedule will promote accountability.

Like the Information Commissioner, we are aiming for increased openness and transparency across government.

At the same time, we recognize that proactive publication does not eliminate our responsibility to strengthen the request-based aspect of the system.

For that reason, we are also investing in tools to make processing information requests more efficient. We will support training across government for consistent application of access to information rules and we will provide written explanations for exemptions and exclusions.

We have also heard the commissioner’s concerns regarding overbroad or bad faith requests, those where the intent is clearly to obstruct or bog down the system.

Under very specific circumstances and subject to oversight by the Information Commissioner, government institutions will be able to decline to act on bad faith requests. Doing so will help government better direct its resources to responding to requests that reflect the original intentions of the act, making government more transparent, responsive, and accountable to citizens.

We are making significant reforms to the access to information system, while continuing to establish a relationship of trust between those requesting information and the government that can provide that information. The amendments will also add a new requirement to review the act every five years to make sure it remains current.

The first review will begin no later than one year after the bill receives royal assent.

In addition, we will have a policy requiring departments to regularly review information requests and to use that analysis to make more types of information more easily accessible. This analysis would in turn guide the five-year reviews to ensure ongoing improvement.

After 34 years, the time has come for the ATI laws and program to be revitalized. The reforms we are proposing affect the whole of government, including areas never before touched by the legislation.

They also provide greater powers to the Information Commissioner to oversee the access to information regime and the ability to order the release of records.

I call upon all members to examine, debate, and support the goals of this legislation and to continue to work together to strengthen access to information and make government more open, transparent, and accountable.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we believe it is unacceptable for the government to think that it can assess the motivations of those making access to information requests and make an evaluation about the quality of their motivations as the basis for whether or not that request is honoured.

A fundamental principle in a free, democratic society is that people have the right to request information. Of course there are limitations on that, if there are issues of national security and so forth. However, the principle that it is not the contents of information but rather the motivation of the individual asking for that information that somehow can or should be assessed by government, we would argue, is quite out of step with the way access to information is supposed to work in a free and democratic society.

Can the member agree that this is an impossible and dangerous road for the government to go down, assessing whether or not someone has the right kind of heart or disposition when they are applying for information? Should the government not instead focus its energy on providing information that people ask for, as long as there is not some compelling public interest in not providing that information?

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, after a decade of neglect, secrecy, and obstruction, the party opposite now purports to be a champion of access to information.

[An hon. member]

What?

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

We know the previous government operated as a one-man show that placed countless roadblocks in the way Canadians sought to know how their government made decisions. Our government is fixing that issue for future governments. This legislation gives order-making power to the Information Commissioner. This legislation codifies proactive disclosure for all parliamentarians.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Before we go to questions and comments, I know that hon. members have been gone for a while and perhaps forget the rules to some extent, but I would remind them to ask their questions and then wait for the answers, as opposed to coaching the person giving the answer or asking the question. I did not write the rules; I am just enforcing them.

The hon. member for Regina—Lewvan.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, in the last election the Liberal platform promised to extend the Access to Information Act to the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices. I am wondering if the member across the way could explain to us why this bill does not seek to extend access to information to cabinet ministers' offices.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, with these proposed changes, we are stepping up on our commitment to make government more open and transparent. Bill C-58 is the first major overhaul of the Access to Information Act in 34 years. It proposes to enhance the accountability and transparency of federal institutions and promote an open and democratic society. We have already committed to the principle of openness by default, and the changes we are proposing to the Access to Information Act are another step on that bold path.

In brief, here is what we are proposing. We would amend the act to entrench in law the requirement that government organizations proactively publish a broad range of information in a timely manner and without having to receive an access to information request; we would give the Information Commissioner new powers to order the release of government records; we would put in place a range of measures to improve the administration of the request-based system, an outdated system that has not significantly changed since the act came into effect in 1983; and we would make mandatory a review of the act every five years so that it never again becomes outdated.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this legislation would ensure that the Access to Information Act never gets out of date, as it is today, and that it would be mandatory for the act to be reviewed every five years. Can the hon. member explain to the House how this would increase openness and transparency?

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, our amendments would increase a new section of the act, part 2, requiring more than 240 government institutions to proactively publish key information that is known to be of interest to Canadians and that Canadians have a right to know. Under the provisions of part 2, we would extend the Access to Information Act for the first time ever to the Prime Minister's and ministers' offices, senators and members of Parliament, and to institutions that support Parliament and the federal courts. Proactive publication would include information such as travel and hospitality expenses, contracts over $10,000, service contracts for senators and members of Parliament, mandate letters, briefing packages for new ministers, question period binders and binders for appearances before parliamentary committees, and that is just the beginning.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I want to draw attention to what the member said. She said that this legislation would cover areas not previously touched by the legislation and that it would never again be out of date. However, the member has not answered the question, the big elephant in the room, and that is the breaking of an election promise again, wherein the Liberals indicated that there would be transparency and access to cabinet ministers' and the Prime Minister's information, and she continues to go around it.

We have another elephant in the room—it is getting very crowded here—which is what the reasoning is behind choosing to kick that can down the road and not fulfill their election promise.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, proactive publication not only increases the availability of government information but also increases transparency and allows citizens to more easily hold their government to account for its use of public funds. The current access to information system is under strain. The number of requests is rising at a rate of roughly 13% every year. The sheer amount of government information has risen exponentially. We have heard fair criticisms from Canadians about delays and inconsistencies in the current request-based system. Therefore, we are making investments that would improve the way requests are proposed, including updating the electronic processing tools government institutions use to respond to requests for information and proposing amendments to the act that would allow government institutions to work together to process requests more efficiently and quickly.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to take the third, or maybe fourth crack, with this member at asking the same question. It was a campaign commitment that the act would be extended to include matters that are ministerial and part of the PMO. It was also in the minister's mandate letter.

In fact, just last week, September 15, a Federal Court judge ordered the central bureaucracy that serves the Prime Minister and his cabinet to partially release pages of information that were central to the Senate spending scandal in 2013. The judge ruled that these had been wrongly classified as ministerial advice and improperly withheld.

Everything we have seen from NGOs and the Information Commissioner says that this legislation does not close that loophole. Therefore, I ask for the fourth time, could the member point us to the part of the act that tells us it is being extended to include cabinet confidences and ministerial information? Otherwise, we will have to say again that the Liberals have broken their campaign promise.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party has led the charge on openness and transparency. We were the first party to proactively disclose expenses. Now in government, we have unmuzzled scientists, made data open by default, and are now making substantial reforms to the Access to Information Act.

The information commissioners and stakeholders have long advocated for order-making powers. This legislation would ensure that the Access to Information Act never gets out of date, as it is today. It calls for a mandatory review of the act every five years.

The Access to Information Act regime is over 30 years old and has never been substantially changed until now. Our government is doing something that other governments failed to do.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today to be part of the discussion on Bill C-58. As many of the members of the opposition have pointed out with some degree of consistency and clarity, this is perhaps the best example of the legacy of broken promises by the government. This broken promise in effect comprises 31 broken promises. In the midst of my speech I will address how this is not just a simple broken promise. Rather, it affects the entire open government concept paraded by the Liberals in the last election and goes to the heart of the sincerity of the Prime Minister on this subject. Many of the new members of Parliament were not here in the last session when the Prime Minister was the leader of the third party. However, when listening to my speech, members will learn that this was a centrepiece of the Prime Minister's time as MP for Papineau. He seems to have forgotten his passions from his time in opposition.

My friend, the member for Kings—Hants and President of the Treasury Board, in his remarks on this bill last week spoke a lot about his time in cabinet and how proud he was to be in the cabinet of Paul Martin. What was absent in his remarks was that he is no longer in that cabinet but in the cabinet of the current Prime Minister. Possibly he did not work that into his remarks because he was handed the biggest broken promise of the new session. It is never fun to have a prime minister make a minister come to the House of Commons to try to sell a dead fish. That is essentially what this bill is.

I will remind the members who did run on the Liberal platform of their promise. We all remember the various hashtags used by the government in the last election, hashtags about hope, hard work, and real change. “Real Change” was the title of their policy platform. What was contained in that platform? I will quote, “We will ensure that Access to Information applies to the Prime Minister’s and Ministers’ Offices, as well as administrative institutions that support Parliament and the courts.” That was a real change in the section of their platform that talked about open and accountable government.

On the page before that in the document the Liberals also talked about giving real independence to and listening to government watchdogs, such as the Information Commissioner. Many previous information commissioners have provided commentary that the Liberals suggested they were going to act on. I am sure there are countless former watchdogs who are quite disappointed that the Liberals ran on this commitment but have fallen far short. If we look at the Liberals' campaign promise to earn the trust of Canadians, they said that the Prime Minister’s Office would be governed by access to information, as well as all ministers' offices. There were 31 different offices they pledged to bring under the umbrella of access to information. Those are 31 broken promises contained in Bill C-58. Of the litany of broken promises by the government, this is probably the most ambitious because there are 31 broken promises rolled into one.

I would love to have seen the emails about the Prime Minister's trip to a private island, along with the current Minister of Veterans Affairs and various members of Canada 2020 or the Liberal Party of Canada. I have a hard time distinguishing them. We know dribs and drabs about that trip because senior officials at the Privy Council Office had a hard time making sure that the Prime Minister could remain in touch. This was at a secluded billionaire's island. The Government of Canada had a hard time keeping up with the vacation ambitions of the Prime Minister. Had the Prime Minister kept his promise, I would love to have read a bit about what his senior officials thought and how they were pushing the government to accommodate this very unusual request.

Similarly, with regard to the investigations of the Prime Minister by both the Ethics Commissioner and Commissioner of Lobbying, it is unparalleled for a Prime Minister to be subject to one, let alone two, investigations in his first two years. I guess that is real change, and certainly a big change from Mr. Harper. There were no investigations of him over nine years by those officers of Parliament. Now we have two. I would love to see the emails of Gerald Butts and Katie Telford on how to handle the investigation of the Prime Minister's fundraising dinners with Chinese billionaires, the same ones who are building a statue of his father in Canada before the Prime Minister's government builds a statue and monument to the Afghanistan mission. The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation is going to make sure that Pierre Trudeau has a monument before the 40,000 Canadians who served in Afghanistan do. I would love to see a little bit of the commentary on that.

What we have heard from government members, and we are at the beginning of debate so will hear these talking points quite regularly now, is that instead of keeping their promise and providing that 31 offices would now be subject to the Access to Information Act, they are going to produce proactive disclosure. This is their key defence of their broken promise. They are going to release schedules, agendas, and draft question period documents and say those should satisfy us. No, they will not. As members will see, if they stay with me a few moments, this is far more than a broken promise in the real change campaign document to Canadians. Why is that?

I am going to refer to remarks by the Liberal MP for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, a good guy, I might add, a friend. In the last Parliament, he said, “It almost seemed that the Conservatives wanted to have a little more proactivity involved in the sense of what we are doing here with the Liberal Party of Canada, when in fact, we were the ones who brought forward far greater measures on proactive disclosure than this House has ever seen.” He gave a really good speech. I recommend that the member and some of his colleagues refer to it. In the same speech he said, “A country's access to information system is the heart of open government.” These are wonderful words by my friend from Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, the longest serving member in the House from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Why such eloquent prose? What was that member speaking about in the last Parliament? He was speaking about a private member's bill on reforming access to information. Who brought forward that bill? It was the MP for Papineau, now the Prime Minister of Canada, whose own private member's bill in the last Parliament championed open government and reform of access to information. When he spoke, no wonder my friend from Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame was so eloquent in his praise and prose. It was his leader's bill, his leader's raison d'être, as the MP for Papineau.

I always found the number of that bill, Bill C-613, interesting. All government officials are generally in the 613 area code, so I always thought Bill C-613 was kind of ironic. It was the open government bill. The actual name of the bill was an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act and the Access to Information Act (transparency). We know that when a member has a bill tabled and debated in the House, it is the most important issue to them.

We have seen great bills brought forward by passionate members of Parliament. For example, my friend from Cariboo—Prince George brought forward a national framework for post-traumatic stress disorder for our first responders. We have debated that framework, that passion of his, in this Parliament. In the last Parliament, when the Prime Minister was leader of the third party, what was his passion? It was access to information reform and open government.

Someone in the PMO should remind him of that and send him an email. However, we will not be able to see those emails because he is carving that out in these reforms. However, someone should remind the member for Papineau. He is still the member for Papineau. He is also the Prime Minister, and I respect that role. However, I am here to remind him what he brought to Parliament, when he would regularly grill the Conservative government of the day. I remember because I was in cabinet.

From the Prime Minister's bill on reforming and improving access to information, what did it start with? Proposed section 2 read:

2(1) The purpose of this Act is to extend the present laws of Canada to provide a right of access to information in records under the control of all government institutions in accordance with the principles that

(a) government information must be made openly available to the public and accessible....

That was the thrust of the Prime Minister's private member's legislation. In fact, it went on to talk about when it should be held back. I refer to paragraph 2(1)(b) of that bill, which stated, “necessary exceptions to the right of access should be rare, limited and specific.”

With this farce of a bill, how does it measure up against the Prime Minister's Bill C-613? It fails dramatically and terribly. Therefore, the hope and hard work the Prime Minister championed in opposition are long forgotten. His hopes and his promises on open government, which made it all the way to the Liberal platform, were dropped once he formed government. I hope Canadians see this for what it is. Once again, the photo ops and the hashtags do not match the conduct of the government.

I will leave the Prime Minister's Office with one last quote. The people of that office were not here with the member for Papineau in the last Parliament.

[Kevin Lamoureux]

I was.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

No, the people of the Prime Minister's Office were not here. My friend from Winnipeg is heckling me, but he remembers early on that Canadian taxpayers paid to move the Prime Minister's officials to Ottawa. I know they were not here. We paid for them to come after the Liberals won. I would like those officials to also look at proposed subsection 2(4) where it says:

In the event of any uncertainty as to whether an exception applies to a record requested under this Act, the principle set out in paragraph 2(1)(a) applies and the record shall be made available.

Paragraph 2(1)(a) is that, all “government information must be...openly available”. This was the Prime Minister's raison d'être in the last Parliament. He has now brought a bill, through his President of the Treasury Board, to the House that would get an F if it were graded alongside what he suggested, not just in the election campaign but as a private member of the House.

As I said, not only is this a broken promise, it is 31 broken promises because he said that every minister of that front bench would have to have his or office open to disclosure under the Access to Information Act. That was a broken promise for a couple of rows of Parliament.

He then said that the purpose was to always lean in favour of disclosure, that holding back documents should be rare and specific. In this bill, there is also a paragraph that says that, if in the opinion of someone, it is a frivolous request, he or she does not have to disclose it either. This is an exception that one can drive a truck through in what someone might consider frivolous. Therefore, the lofty language and goals of the Prime Minister in the last Parliament certainly did not make their way into Bill C-58.

My colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent did a great job in outlining our opposition concerns with the bill. However, I want officials in the Prime Minister's Office to remind the Prime Minister of not only his commitments in the election but his commitment to this Parliament. His only private member's bill was on access to information and reform of Parliament.

Whether it is Bill C-58 or his commitments to never use omnibus bills, and I have lost track of how of those bills we have had, and how many times the government House leader has brought forward time allocation, the rhetoric of the Liberals in opposition, when held up alongside their actual record in government, is hypocrisy of the highest order. This bill is probably the best example.

I do not like being the voice of doom, but every bill the government brings forward just gives me hours' worth of material, as a parliamentarian. Therefore, with my remaining time, I want to thank Madam Suzanne Legault, who served Canada with great distinction and capability as our information commissioner for many years.

Many of her recommendations and the work she did, at the vanguard of global, open government access to information, was the basis of the Prime Minister's bill and the Prime Minister's old thinking in this area. Once he was sworn in, he forgot all that. I am sure Madam Legault, like many other people, is disappointed.

Here is what she said when I happened to be at committee with her in the previous Parliament, in December 2014:

Over the years, I have also made recommendations to the President of the Treasury Board on various ways to advance accountability and transparency. I am very pleased that most of these recommendations over the years have been implemented by the government.

That was the information commissioner's testimony before committee in the last Parliament.

We heard the last Liberal speaker say that Stephen Harper was not in favour of open government, and that it was a one-man show. That is simply not true. That was a narrative the Prime Minister liked to bring forward and it led to his bill and his showboating on the subject. However, it was not the testimony of our officer of Parliament. That was her quote, that generally governments under her tenure had responded, generally the president of the treasury board had responded to modernization.

I hope the Liberals remove, from their talking points, the aspersions they are casting at Mr. Harper, because they simply are not true. I would refer them to the testimony of Madam Legault and her great record. I asked her some difficult questions that day and she handled them with capability and aplomb. She also ran her department very effectively.

This bill would give more resources to the department, and that is needed. In the last Parliament, I think she lapsed $30,000. I have literally never seen a department run so efficiently. It is impossible for government to meet all its estimates right on. There always will be a lapse or a request for more funds. The department ran a very capable program at a time. Under her watch, there was a 30% increase in access to information requests. That department used technology and a number of means to modernize.

Another thing I see lacking in the bill, and I spoke about this in the last Parliament, is that the Access to Information Act comes from 1983, when the Prime Minister's father was the prime minister. The cost for an access request was $5 in 1983. It has not changed, and it should. The testimony given by Madam Legault suggested that it was a $1,300 internal cost for each request. We want to have open and accessible government, but $1,300 is the internal cost.

With requests going up by 30%, we need to change that. In fact, 21,000 requests of all departments of the government are commercial in nature. I used to see this as a corporate lawyer, companies looking at regulatory issues would submit an access to information because there was no barrier to just firing in thousands of requests. With 55,000 requests, on average, per year, and 30,000 of those being commercial requests, that is $71 million in costs for law firms, accountant firms, and businesses requesting information.

I have always been an advocate of a zero cost for a member of the public, one of our great people interested in democracy, but more like a $25 or $50 cost for a corporation other than a media outlet. We actually could stop some of the frivolous requests being made and clogging the system. John or Jane public member would have full access, but more of a threshold to show we changed a bit since 1983

I would refer the Prime Minister and members of his government to his bill from the last Parliament. I hope we can amend Bill C-58 to capture some of the promises that clearly have been broken.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind viewers of this debate today and readers of Hansard that when they are watching or reading about the grandstanding and righteous indignation of Conservative members that it was the Conservative Party that put forward a promise in the 2006 election to reform the Access to Information Act and the Conservative Party did nothing to reform the act. With its culture of secrecy, that party fully exploited the weaknesses in the act.

Thank goodness we have a Prime Minister who is committed to access to information. We are reforming the act, including giving order-making powers to the commissioner of whom the member for Durham has been so congratulatory.

My question for the member is on his colleague's comments on frivolous and vexatious requests. He essentially said that we should not address that in this reform even though the commissioner and the committee recommended it, and eight provinces and three territorial governments have some variation of it. In the absence of frivolous and vexatious exclusions, the system can get completely bogged down with individuals, for example, ATIPing their ex spouses daily activities and emails.

Would the member agree that by removing those types of applications for information, the system could respond much better to the real access to information requests of ordinary Canadians?

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I hope the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra does not feel that a passionate, fiery, and well-researched speech is somehow grandstanding. I would suggest that grandstanding is a third-party leader introducing a private member's bill that he had no intention of following once he had the power.

I would refer the member to the comments made by Madame Legault during the last Parliament, when she could have criticized the Harper government. She said, “I am very pleased that most of these recommendations over the years have been implemented by the government.” Madame Legault wanted to see far more open government. She wanted zero cost for access. She wanted everything to be accountable, including the Prime Minister and his 30 ministers. She would obviously be disappointed, as would most of the Liberals who voted for them, if they voted on this promise.

The member asked about frivolous and vexatious requests. I provided an easy way to thin out the vexatious or frivolous requests by changing the fee structure, which has not changed since 1983. The fee has been $5 for everything. Maybe we do not charge the public and media—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

And the opposition members.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

My colleague is right, Mr. Speaker. Opposition members of Parliament of course.

Maybe we charge more for access to information requests from commercial enterprises that might be preparing to do a merger or are preparing due diligence documents for a deal. Lawyers and accountants are billing hundreds of dollars per hour and the Government of Canada is charging them $5 for something that costs at least $1,300 to do. That approach would be far superior from what we see.

The broad language in the bill right now further erodes the grandstanding promises made by the Prime Minister in the last Parliament and in the election.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I share the Conservative member's disappointment that the campaign commitment made by the Liberal government to close the loophole for access to information to the Prime Minister's Office and ministerial offices was not done even though that was in the Liberal mandate letters and in the campaign promise. I agree that Bill C-58 fails on that.

However, we have a bit more prehistory. In 2006, the Harper Conservatives campaigned on a promise that they would update access to information legislation, but they did not. The New Democrats introduced private members bills based on the recommendations by successive information commissioners. My colleague, Pat Martin, brought a private member's bill forward in 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2014, and the Conservatives voted against every one of them.

Why the change of heart now?

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when we are giving our speeches or asking questions or making comments here, we all focus on elements of our own past. I quoted the Information Commissioner and how she responded to how the government had responded to her recommendations. She said, “I am very please that most of these recommendations over the years have been implemented by the government.” I know that the member was not in the previous Parliament. However, she can refer to Madam Legault's comments.

Did the Conservative government do all of what was in Bill C-613, or in Pat Martin's private member's bill? No, it did not. I remember debating Pat Martin about one of his versions of the bill and suggesting that he bring the same disclosure he aspired to in government to his legal defence fund. Members might remember that from the last Parliament. He actually had unions contribute in a roundabout way, which I felt went around the rules for fundraising, to pay some of the bills for a libel action he had. I remember that debate. To his credit, Pat Martin did bring it regularly.

However, what I am highlighting today is the acute hypocrisy of the Prime Minister, because not only did we all see it in the “Real Change” document, and we have all referred to the Liberals' promise, but he brought a private member's bill forward in the last Parliament as the member of Parliament for Papineau. Just as we all bring bills or motions forward on areas we care the most about, that is what the Prime Minister said he cared the most about.

As I said, if we compare Bill C-58 to what he brought forward in Bill C-613 in the last Parliament, one cannot even recognize it. Certainly, at an absolute minimum, of the 31 broken promises, I think we all would agree that with respect to the Prime Minister's Office and all the cabinet offices, this is the most egregious of the broken promises. I am highlighting, based on my experience here in Parliament, where I think this falls short the most.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleague about a point of broader principle. The government's justification for many of the bills it brings forward often comes down to saying that it is modernizing or updating. Something has not changed in a while, so it is modernizing or updating it. However, very often in the process, its so-called modernization moves in the opposite direction from what it promised. We saw that in the spring with its desire to make unilateral changes to the House of Commons. It said it would update and modernize the House of Commons, but actually, it was trying to make the House less democratic. Usually when we think of updating or modernizing, we think of improvements to democracy and transparency. However, the government is moving in the opposite direction with this legislation, as with the legislation it brought forward in the spring.

I wonder if my colleague can comment on the disingenuousness of some of that language and how it is not enough for the government to say it is modernizing. It has to explain how it is modernizing and what the real impact of those changes would be.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my friend from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. Normally we would bring modernization forward in such a way as to see the improvements that are recommended either by officers of Parliament, such as Madam Legault and others, or by aspirational politicians of the past, such as the member of Parliament for Papineau when he was in opposition and wanted to see far more from government. Now he is not fulfilling that.

I would also direct my friend to an interesting comment. I quoted at length my friend from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, who was the democratic reform critic in the last Parliament, when the Liberals were the third party. He also suggested in question period to my friend from Muskoka, who was the minister at the time, that salaries and full contract details for members of the Prime Minister's Office should be disclosed. I would like the member from Newfoundland to go to the PMO and suggest to the senior officials that full details on salaries, contracts, and the email correspondence should be accessible under access to information, because certainly that is what the Prime Minister sought as modernization through his bill, Bill C-613. It is also what the member from Newfoundland asked the Conservative government to do with respect to open government. I hope the modernization my friend asked about, the aspirations of the Liberals when they were in opposition, will slowly start meeting the reality of the Liberals in government.