House of Commons Hansard #205 of the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was requests.
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Mr. Speaker, the second petition is in regard to the electoral reform promised in the last election. Canadians deserve fair voting.
The petitioners call on the government to do as it promised and ensure that 2015 is indeed the last federal election conducted under first pass the post. They want systems that include proportional representation, mixed member representation.
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today with two petitions.
The first is from constituents throughout my riding of Saanich—Gulf Islands.
The petitioners call on the government to implement, at the federal level, as some provinces have already done, a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, for oil and gas; to conduct a complete and comprehensive environmental review; and to also assess the toxicity of the materials used in the fracking process.
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Mr. Speaker, the second petition, also from residents of Saanich—Gulf Islands, relates to the very critical issue of affordable housing and particularly to the need to establish housing as a right.
The petitioners specifically have called for the government to follow the recommendations of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and restore the favourable tax treatment we used to have for purpose-built rental housing to alleviate the housing shortage.
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by a number of Canadian citizens from across Ontario who are upset with the settlement payment of $10.5 million to Omar Khadr, as well as the apology issued to him. They list a number of reasons why they are upset.
The petitioners ask the Government of Canada to revoke its apology issued to Mr. Khadr on July 7, and seek to redirect any settlement payments attached to that apology to Sergeant Speer's widow and Mr. Morris for their pain and suffering caused at the hands of Mr. Khadr.
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Mr. Speaker, I stand today with petitioners from my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith who call on the government to respect the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to honour Jordan's principle and fund equally health care and access to education for first nations and indigenous children in accordance with four different Canadian Human Rights Tribunal rulings.
Since we are coming up to September 30 and Orange Shirt Day to honour residential school victims, I urge all members of the House to honour and respect the petition tabled here today.
Kevin Lamoureux LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.
The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan
The Chair has notice of a request for an emergency debate from the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Mr. Speaker, in a parliamentary democracy, it is critical that we respond to foreign policy crises that confront our country with debate in the House of Commons. This is how we adjudicate these matters, but it is also how we show the world how seriously we take responsible government.
Therefore, pursuant to Standing Order 52(2), I would like to propose an emergency debate on the situation unfolding in Burma and Canada's response. This issue has been raised regularly by our party in question period for over a year and a half, but the issue has not had a full airing in parliamentary debate.
Let me be clear on what the situation is right now on the ground. According to Amnesty International's crisis response director, the evidence is irrefutable that Myanmar security forces are setting the northern Rakhine State ablaze in a targeted campaign to push the Rohingya people out of Myanmar. Make no mistake, this is ethnic cleansing.
We have a campaign of ethnic cleansing presently going on in a country that is a major recipient of Canadian development assistance against which we have yet to impose new sanctions and in a country where the de facto leader is an honorary Canadian citizen and Nobel laureate. Notwithstanding the Canadian connection, the Prime Minister failed to mention this issue at all during his speech at the UN.
Earlier this year, Mr. Speaker, you granted an emergency debate on the proposed executive order by the Trump administration. This was an important issue and I spoke on it. Surely, if that merited an emergency debate in the House, the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Rohingya does as well. If the emergency debate is granted, I would suggest that it be scheduled for tomorrow to ensure that as many members as possible have time to arrange their schedules in order to be here to participate, but certainly whatever time you think is best. The world is watching.
The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan
I thank the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan for his argument. I do find that it meets the exigencies of the Standing Order. The emergency debate will be scheduled for tomorrow evening, as he has suggested, and I thank him for that suggestion.
The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-58, An Act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Erin Weir NDP Regina—Lewvan, SK
Mr. Speaker, today is the first day of Right to Know Week. Accordingly, it is a very appropriate time to reflect on the importance of access to information for good governance and advancing our democracy.
I will start by saying a few words about committees, because one of the arguments we have heard at considerable length and volume from the member for Winnipeg North was that the proposed legislation might not be perfect, which is why we have committees that can amend a bill. However, I think it is very important to note that the government has disregarded the recommendations of the access to information committee in drafting the bill. We have a lot of very good recommendations from that committee that have been left by the wayside by the government in putting forward the legislation before us, and so I think there is a problem there.
The second committee I would like to talk about is the government operations committee, because my perspective on the issue of access to information is very much informed by the work I have done with that committee, and specifically the study that we recently conducted on whistle-blower protection in the federal public service. In this case we have civil servants risking their careers, reputations, and livelihoods to bring forward information that is seen to be relevant to Canadian citizens and important to the proper governance of our country. I think it puts in perspective the whole notion of access to information. If we have our public servants going to these heroic lengths to bring forward information that will improve our democracy and safeguard good decision-making, then it is truly incumbent upon us as parliamentarians to come up with the best possible access to information regime so that this information can actually come out without people needing to take the risk of coming forward as whistle-blowers.
The government operations committee did put forward and table in this place a unanimous report, supported by all three major parties represented on that committee, calling for some very substantial improvements to our federal whistle-blower protection system. Those included a broadening of the definition of “wrongdoing” as well as the definition of “reprisals”, creating a reverse onus so that it would be an obligation of the government, as the employer, to demonstrate that disciplinary action taken against a bona fide whistle-blower was not a reprisal, rather than putting a whistle-blower in the almost impossible position of having to prove that it was a reprisal. We recommended better compensation for whistle-blowers to ensure that they are made whole, which would include covering their legal costs. Another aspect of that compensation is priority placement to other equivalent jobs in the federal public service, because once someone has blown the whistle, it could be very difficult and perhaps not very appealing for them to go back to work, quite possibly, for the person they blew the whistle against. Therefore, we think they need to be assured of some sort of alternative employment within the federal public service.
We are waiting with bated breath for cabinet's response to the committee's report on whistle-blower protection, which I would highlight as an important part of bringing forward the information we need. However, the focus of the legislation we are debating today is the access to information system, which is a means of bringing that information forward without requiring public servants to go through the arduous process of being whistle-blowers. All of this is to say that whistle-blower protection is critically important.
I would like to talk about three aspects of the proposed legislation. The first is the scope of the act. The second is exemptions from the act. The third is the difference between proactive disclosure and access to information.
In terms of the scope of the act, it is very important to recognize that in the last election campaign, the Liberal Party promised to extend access to information to the Prime Minister's Office and other ministers' offices. That was a really clear promise, in black and white.
The bill before us today does not do that. It is another broken promise. It is a very clear-cut case. Earlier today we heard a speech by the member for Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle. At least four different members of the opposition asked that government member why this bill does not extend the access to information provisions to the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices. There was no answer to that question. It is a pretty important question that we should be hearing some sort of a response to from the government side, if not from that particular member of Parliament.
This broken promise is becoming part of a pattern. We see the government's broken promise on electoral reform, the repeatedly stated notion that 2015 would be the last election conducted under first past the post. That is a very blatant broken promise.
We had the promise to close the loophole that allows half of the value of stock options to be exempt from personal income tax, which is another very clear promise the government has broken.
We had the promise to restore door-to-door mail delivery, again going back to the government operations and estimates committee. I was part of the committee that reported on the future of Canada Post and, indeed, recommended a restoration of home mail delivery. Many months later, the cabinet has still not responded to that report, which suggests to me that it is planning to break its promise on door-to-door mail delivery. At a minimum we can say that the government has not yet kept that promise. That is as charitable as I think I can be on that point.
We have a problem with the scope of proposed access to information measures for not including the Prime Minister's Office and other ministers' offices. This bill does nothing to correct that problem, much less keep the Liberals' promise to do so.
The second thing I want to talk about is exceptions to the act. Despite the idea of the right to know, the government can fail to provide information in a variety of ways. One of them, of course, is by delaying the release of information. In some cases, an extension of up to 200 days can make a pretty material difference in how useful the information is and to what purposes it can be put. I would just note that this bill does not do very much to correct those delays in releasing information.
Other exceptions to the act would include cabinet confidences and advice to ministers. Those sorts of things are fairly blanket justifications that the government can invoke to not provide certain information. Almost anything can be labelled “advice to the minister” or a “cabinet confidence”. The bill does nothing to correct those problems either.
Worse, the bill actually adds new grounds on which the government can refuse to provide information. Specifically, the bill would allow the government not to respond to frivolous requests or requests for information that are deemed to be in bad faith.
Earlier today my colleague, the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, did an excellent job in making the point that it is not reasonable for some government official to be in a position of having to determine the motivation of the person requesting the information. It is a very odd thing to expect that someone in the public service could determine whether or not a request is in bad faith, and reject it on that basis. I would add that to the list of questions we have not really heard much of a response to from the government today.
We have heard, however, a couple of times an example from the government side of what might be deemed a bad-faith request. In presenting this bill at second reading, the President of the Treasury Board gave the following example: “if an ex-spouse ATIPs his or her former spouse's work hours on a daily basis or their emails.” We also heard the member for Vancouver Quadra repeat that example in the House today.
This example is actually about privacy, and if we just use the acronym ATIP that the President of the Treasury Board used, it stands for access to information and privacy. Certainly we need to protect the privacy of people who work for the federal government and, indeed, of all Canadians, on whom the federal government may possess personal information. However, I would say that privacy protection should not be contingent on whether the request for information is deemed to be in bad faith. Therefore, this is actually quite a poor example from the government side. It would be a good example in favour of adequate privacy protections, but it is a very weak example in defence of this good-faith requirement to access information, because people need to have privacy rights that are very much separate from whether a request for their information is deemed to be made in bad faith. Again, the example that we have heard repeatedly is really about privacy provisions; it is not about being able to reject access to information on the grounds of bad faith. If there is a member on the government side who would like to ask me about that, I would be happy to discuss it further and perhaps consider what the government is really trying to get at here.
A third point that I want to delve into is the difference between proactive disclosure and access to information. Over the last couple of days, it seems that proactive disclosure is emerging as a new Liberal buzzword. It has not yet quite attained the status of the phrase, “the middle class and those working hard to join it”, and it maybe has not quite attained the status of a “whole-of-government approach”, but we have heard a lot about proactive disclosure. I was a bit surprised and disappointed that no member of the government has yet stood to say that this bill would provide a whole-of-government approach to proactive disclosure to benefit the middle class and those working hard to join it, because it was a missed opportunity to tie together all of the best buzzwords from the government side. However, the Liberals do have some speaking slots remaining today, so perhaps there is a member on the government side who is up to that challenge.
However, in all seriousness, when we talk about proactive disclosure, a cynical interpretation would be that if the government is required to disclose all of its briefing books, that would put officials in the position of essentially having to draft special briefing books for public consumption. I think there are limits to the value of proactive disclosure, but we can all agree that proactive disclosure is on balance a good thing. I do not think anyone on the opposition side is objecting to the concept of proactive disclosure, but certainly what we are saying is that proactive disclosure is no substitute for access to information, because proactive disclosure allows the government to prepare certain documents for public consumption and then put them out publicly. That is fine, and it is better for the government to do that than for it not to put forward material for public consumption. However, access to information is quite a different concept. Access to information is about giving citizens access to documents the government does not want to publish. Access to information is about giving citizens access to documents that were not prepared for public consumption. Therefore, while it might be a good thing to expand the scope of proactive disclosure, it is in no way a solution to the problems we have with access to information.
It is important in this debate to make a really clear distinction between proactive disclosure, which the government has been touting and talking a lot about, versus access to information, the right of citizens to access material the government is not putting out publicly. We need to keep those things separate. This piece of legislation amending the Access to Information Act really should be judged on the basis of whether and how much it improves access to information, not on whether the government might also be doing some decent things in the area of proactive disclosure.
I would like to reiterate. I started off by saying that for me, this whole debate is very much informed by the work I have done on the government operations committee, specifically our study of whistle-blower protection in the federal public service. We heard heart-wrenching stories of Government of Canada employees and contractors who lost their careers and their livelihoods by bringing forward information that was relevant to our democracy and to the governance of our country. If we have whistle-blowers out there making those kinds of sacrifices for the good of Canada, then surely it is incumbent on us as parliamentarians, on both sides of the House, to do everything we can to get the best possible access to information system so that as far as possible, information that is relevant comes out through that system, rather than requiring our fearless public servants to make these sacrifices as whistle-blowers.
That is the overall context for this debate and why it is so important to get this legislation right rather than saying that it is maybe a slight improvement over the status quo and maybe we can improve it at committee or in five-year reviews. This is a critically important thing. It is being redone for the first time in three decades, so we need to do a lot better. We need to have the best possible access to information system in our country.
I talked about three different aspects of the bill.
First was the scope of it, which continues to exclude the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices. The Liberal promise during the election was to extend access to information to include the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices. When the member for Winnipeg North stands up and says that the bill is consistent with what the Liberals talked about during the election or what they heard on the doorsteps, I do not know what he means, because it clearly does not implement what was in the Liberal platform.
Second were exceptions from the act. To me, exceptions include delays and the ability to exclude information based on cabinet confidence or policy advice to ministers. Thanks to this bill, those exceptions would actually be increased to include what are deemed to be frivolous or vexatious requests for information. As I pointed out, the one example we have heard in support of this point is really an example of the need for privacy protections, which should be there whether or not the claim for information is in good faith. That example does not stand up, and I am hoping that the government can bring forward something a lot more credible in support of this notion that officials should be able to reject access to information requests on the basis of some evaluation of the motives of the person making the request.
The final thing I talked about was the difference between proactive disclosure and access to information. Both might be good things, but they are not the same thing. We cannot allow the government's claim to be doing more proactive disclosure to overshadow the fact that it is not doing much at all to improve access to information, which is what the bill is supposed to be about.
Joyce Murray LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board
Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the comments of the member for Regina—Lewvan, and I want to thank him for the measured, substantive approach he is taking to debate on this very important matter of improving our access to information process in Canada.
He made the point several times in his remarks that there is really no connection between the provisions to require proactive disclosure and access to information. I want to say that I could not disagree more. One of the key complaints about the access to information system, and one of the failures of the system, is the number of access to information requests that are not answered within the statutory time frames, as much as attempts are being made to do so. Why is that? One reason is that there are so many requests today. In fact, 10% of all the requests made in the 34 years this regime has been in place were made in just one recent year. There are an overwhelming number of requests.
What proactive disclosure will do is reduce the number of requests, so it goes directly to the heart of that key challenge for our access to information system's timeliness and effectiveness.
If proactive disclosure is required, not just policy, and it covers 240 institutions, plus members of Parliament, senators, the Prime Minister's Office, institutions of Parliament, and the courts, does the member not believe that this will actually directly assist in the improvement of access to information?
Erin Weir NDP Regina—Lewvan, SK
Mr. Speaker, I did not say that there is no connection between proactive disclosure and access to information. I said that proactive disclosure was not a substitute for access to information. Of course there is a connection. If information comes out through proactive disclosure, there might not be the need for it to come out through access to information.
There are also connections to the whistle-blower protection system, as I mentioned. That is another way government information can come forward.
Of course, there are many channels through which government information can become public, and there is some interplay between all those channels, but even if I agree with everything the parliamentary secretary has just said, that more proactive disclosure could reduce the number of access to information requests, we still need better rules for how the government handles those access to information requests. Simply reducing the number of access to information requests is not the goal. The goal should be to improve the way in which those requests are processed so that the maximum amount of information is released in a timely manner. For example, the bill gives the government new excuses for not divulging information. That is a problem, and it is not solved by more proactive disclosure of other information.
Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of concerns about this legislation, because it has been our experience already that the government is not being open and transparent. We can remember, on the carbon tax, when we requested information, that the Liberals blacked out information parliamentarians should have had access to. Constituents in my riding have put in access to information requests and have had to put them in 20 different times to get the actual answers to the questions.
I fear that there is a huge loophole here for the government to not be transparent, and I wonder if the member could comment.
Erin Weir NDP Regina—Lewvan, SK
Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree that there are big problems with our current access to information system. It is difficult for citizens to get government information, and often there are lengthy delays in obtaining that information, even when it is disclosed. My concern about the proposed bill is that it does not solve those problems. It does not solve the problem of delays. Maybe the parliamentary secretary is suggesting that by possibly reducing the number of requests, other requests could be processed faster, but there is no actual requirement to process requests faster.
The problem we often see is that government departments wait until the very last minute to provide the information. They wait until the deadline, and there is really nothing in this legislation to shorten that period in a significant way or to provide some onus to disclose the information more quickly when it is feasible to do so.
There is also the problem in the bill of giving the government yet more excuses to not release the information at all, including this very nebulous requirement that the request somehow be made in good faith, which I think would be a very difficult thing for the government to judge, even if it were acting completely in good faith.
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Mr. Speaker, it was a Liberal campaign promise to include the Prime Minister's Office and ministerial offices in the Access to Information Act. It was a directive in the mandate letter to the minister. It was the subject of at least five private member's bills, in the previous Parliament, brought forward by New Democrats.
I would like to hear from my New Democrat colleague what is lost, given the government's failure to include the PMO and ministerial offices in Bill C-58.
Erin Weir NDP Regina—Lewvan, SK
Mr. Speaker, clearly the Prime Minister's Office and ministers' offices are places where key decisions are made. A lot of the information citizens would want to access pass through those offices.
The fact that they are not subject to access to information is a huge loophole in the current system. It is a problem that has been identified by many outside experts and by non-profit organizations focused on access to information. It is also a problem that was identified by the Liberals themselves. In the election, they promised to extend access to information to the Prime Minister's Office and to ministers' offices. This bill clearly does not do it. Furthermore, we have not heard any kind of explanation from the government as to why it is breaking this promise.
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the level of detail the member brings to this House from the committee work he has done.
If we are able to put information online and have less of a load on the departments, would that not help alleviate some of the member's concerns around whistle-blowers?
Erin Weir NDP Regina—Lewvan, SK
Mr. Speaker, once again, proactive disclosure can be a good thing. However, I would suggest that it is extremely unlikely that the government will proactively disclose the kind of information that is being brought forward by whistle-blowers. It is very unlikely that the documents the government prepares for proactive disclosure will actually encompass the kind of information that people come forward and blow the whistle to release. That is why it is so important to strengthen the access to information system far more than this bill does. If we strengthened it and citizens could actually get the information, there might be less need for public servants to have to go through the whistle-blower process.
I think that improving access to information certainly could help to alleviate some of the pressures on the whistle-blower protection system. I am skeptical that more proactive disclosure will do so, even though I would agree with the member across the way that proactive disclosure can be a positive thing.
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Mr. Speaker, today, September 25, is Franco-Ontarian Day. I want to extend my best wishes to all Franco-Ontarians and to honour this important day by beginning my speech in French.
Bill C-58 authorizes heads of government institutions to decline access to information requests if they are vexatious or made in bad faith. Those subjective criteria will be used to decide who gets access to information. This bill gives the Information Commissioner more power, which makes it much harder for those seeking access to information to obtain an investigation. In essence, this bill will make it harder for Canadian citizens, media, and opposition party members to access information. Do we live in an open and democratic country?
I would also like to point out that the Prime Minister promised the Access to Information Act would also apply to cabinet and the Prime Minister's Office. Bill C-58 is just another example of what Canadians already know: the Prime Minister is not a man of his word. He simply does not keep his election promises.
Suffice it to say, here we are. It is Monday, we are in Ottawa, it is hot, I am speaking, and we are discussing another broken Liberal promise. Therefore, despite the summer, not much has changed.
Before I go too far into the substance of this bill, being back from the summer and having not had the chance to do so yet, I want to quickly pay tribute to my friend Arnold Chan. It was an honour to serve in this House with him. One of the things that has not been mentioned in his many tributes is his great service as the chair of the Canada-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship Group. It was through the group that I was able to get to know him. His commitment to that cause showed his character, his willingness to invest in Canada's relationship with a relatively small country, yet a country that is hard pressed because of the challenges it faces with its neighbours. His commitment to engaging with that cause showed his principled approach to politics. I wanted to make sure that was mentioned as well. I certainly would associate myself with all of the tributes that have been made recognizing his contribution to this place, his commitment to raising the standard of debate, and the other very important things that were said.
To the issue at hand, we are debating a government bill that would make various changes with respect to the access to information regime. I was not here for much of last week because I was in New York. I had the pleasure of going to some UN meetings with the President of the Treasury Board, as part of the Open Government Partnership. It was an interesting week, leading up to where we are today debating this bill, to have and to hear some discussions with our international partners specifically about the question of open government, of the access of citizens to government.
I was particularly struck by a presentation that was made by the President of Estonia. She was talking about the link between open government and trust. She made the point, and it is obviously true if one digs into it, that the mechanisms of open government, the structures and institutions of open government, can really only have meaning and be effective if they are associated with a culture in which people trust and have reason to trust the government. People are not going to share information with a government that they do not trust. They are not going to trust the quality of the information that they receive if there is not an underlying sense of being able to rely on the information, that they can rely on its word and on its commitment to a credible process. In other words, open government is a process, but it is also about a mentality, not just about a set of institutional changes. That was the case that she made, and I found it resonated with me and many of the other people in the room.
I say that because it is particularly paradoxical today. We are debating a bill that purports to be about the opening up of government, where the government is breaking faith, breaking trust, with the people who elected it by going back substantively on a promise. Of course, as colleagues of mine have said, we have seen many cases of the government breaking its election promises. However, it is particularly notable in this case when we are discussing an area that is supposed to be all about trust, about open government. The government is saying it is trying to open it up, and at the same doing it in a way that undermines a clear election commitment that it made.
Unfortunately, the government's unwillingness to take the promises it made seriously has undermined many people's trust in government and faith in the political process. Therefore, for those in the House who are interested in substantively advancing the values of open government, it is not just about institutional changes and structures, it is about following through on one's commitments. It is about respecting the trust that people have given, which is the basis for open government, as well as some of these institutional changes. I want to put that out as a kind of contextual framework for the conversation. Again, I think people would be disappointed anytime that they see the government breaking promises. There have been many instances of that, but when it is a process around open government, it is particularly ironic, and goes that much further in undermining people's trust in government.
Having said that, in terms of an introductory set-up, I will talk about the substance of the legislation.
Bill C-58 deals with access to information, which is the right that citizens have to file requests to the government to get information about what is happening inside of government. This is information that may not be proactively disclosed but that may be available. It is an important tool for opposition parties that are holding the government to account. Accessing information from the government is something that we do on a regular basis. It is also something that civil society organizations, academics, and ordinary citizens do. People have a range of motivations for accessing the information. As I said earlier in questions and comments, and I will come back to it later, it is not for the state, for us as parliamentarians, or for government ministers to judge whether someone's desire for accessing information is reasonable or justified.
The law ought to prescribe people having a right to certain information, to know how government operates and what the government is doing, and then it is up to them to decide how, when, and for what to use that information. I think that is an important principle. Obviously, certain information cannot be made available through access to information requests. However, we should not try to create a situation where the government is evaluating people's motivation and subjectively being able to determine whether it will give that information, based even on who the person is making the request.
Bill C-58 proposes various changes to the framework for access to information. I will mention a few of the particular aspects of it, and then I want to develop them.
There was a promise from the Liberals during the last election campaign. They said that they were going to extend access to information to activities within ministers' offices and within the Prime Minister's Office. This proposed legislation would not do that. The Liberals are breaking their commitment to having access to information include ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office. Unfortunately, they are going back on a very clear commitment yet again.
Under the proposed act, we would have a situation in which the government could refuse any access to information request that it regards as being vexatious, made in bad faith, or as a misuse of the right to request information. However, when we think about a vexatious request or a request made in bad faith, it is according to whom? In a free society, an opposition party, a member of the media, or a third-party organization might make an access to information request for no other reason than because they wish to politically embarrass the government. Certainly I would never make an access to information request along those lines, but I have heard of this maybe happening.
It is part of free democratic debate that people can access that information and use it as they see fit. With regard to exposing what is happening in government, even if the motivation of the person is purely to embarrass the government, that embarrassment may well be in the public interest, for the public to know what the government is doing behind closed doors and to hold the government accountable for that.
However, it begs the question of vexatious and in bad faith according to whom, because generally we accept that open information is in the public interest. It is consistent with the comment that the information be out there regardless of why it was requested in the first place or who is accessing it. The paradoxical situation envisioned by this is one in which perhaps I, as a member of the opposition requesting certain information, could be denied that information on the outlandish assumption that I am requesting it in bad faith, but that with someone else who requests exactly the same information, it is going to be presumed that they are not.
It invites the government to make determinations on the basis of motivation. However, more than that, it gives it the subjective power to make that determination. It may well be that it would claim that a request for information is vexatious or in bad faith, when in reality it is simply that the government department or minister in question does not want to see that information go out.
This is a problem. This is a troubling standard or mechanism for making determinations on what information goes out. We have the breaking of a promise and we have the introduction of a subjective standard that asks the government to psychoanalyze the motivations of the person seeking that information. These are two very clear and strong reasons for why not only our party but the NDP as well are opposing this. We both feel that these things are concerning.
Folks may have a range of different opinions about who and what should be subject to access to information, but the reality is that the Liberals, when they were in the third-party position, had the ability to engage in those debates internally, to think about what was and was not appropriate in the context of access to information, and to put their conclusions into their platform. That was what they offered to the Canadian people as their commitment of what they were going to do and how they were going to move forward. It was clearly there, and yet they went in the other direction. They totally reneged on it.
I want to note that this is not the first time we have seen the government break its election promises. There may be a record being set right now by the government in terms of the complete disregard for its election promises. Probably the most well-known and discussed example is the Liberals' commitment with respect to changes to the electoral system. They said that 2015 was going to be the last election under first past the post. Unless someone is planning for us to stop having elections, that promise will not be kept.
The Prime Minister, in the context of pulling back and declaring his intention to break that promise, said something to the effect that they were going to do what they felt was in the best interests of Canadians, not simply try to check a box on a platform. It begs the question then of what in the world the point of the platform was in the first place. The Liberals are supposed to make that public interest evaluation before they make the promise. They are not supposed to make whatever promises they think will get them elected and then make a public interest evaluation after that. That is the whole point of elections. The public evaluates what we put in front of them and makes that determination.
We were saying at the time that if we were going to change the electoral system, we would need to have a referendum. The government was somewhat unclear, but it was trying to get a particular result in terms of an electoral system, a runoff ballot. It became clear in the consultation process that nobody really wanted it. There were people talking about proportional representation, about the status quo, but it was only the Prime Minister and those around him who were talking about this runoff ballot.
When the government realized that it was not going to get that, rather than having a referendum, rather than taking seriously the recommendations of the committee, it decided it was just going to tear up the whole process. This was a broken promise that broke trust in the government. It left a lot of people disappointed and cynical about whether or not the platform commitments were meaningful.
On a lot of people's minds right now is the government's plan to change the system around small businesses and significantly increase the taxes they face. I should remind the government that this is also at odds with an election promise. It is hard to believe now that they promised to reduce taxes on small businesses. They have not talked about that one very much.
All three of the major parties in the House promised to move us to a small business tax rate of 9%. Then the government effectively raised taxes on small business initially by saying it would leave the tax rate at 10.5%. That was one broken promise to small business.
The Liberals also eliminated the hiring credit, which was specifically an incentive to encourage hiring. It is not something that I heard about from the Liberal candidate in Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan during the last election. Did they say they were going to eliminate the hiring credit for small businesses and make it harder for them to hire people? What about that idea? It did not come up in the forums. It did not come up in what they were saying while knocking on doors.
Not only did the government take those steps, but now it is contemplating the largest change to the tax code that we have seen in a long time. It is a change that virtually everybody is against. Not a single person has contacted my office in favour of the proposed changes. Probably now that I have said that, somebody somewhere will, but I have received an overwhelming amount of correspondence in opposition to these changes. This completely goes against the commitments that the Liberals made. During the election they talked about lowering taxes for small business.
The Liberals made other major economic promises.
They made a clear commitment to run $10-billion deficits in each of the first three years they were in government and then balance the budget in the final year. We did not think that was particularly prudent even as explained, but it was what they described as modest deficits. They have completely blown those numbers out of the water, by orders of magnitude. We are looking at not three years of projected deficits but at decades of projected deficits under the current plans of the government. As usually happens, it will take a Conservative government to clean up that mess.
It is hard for me to imagine how government members justify this flagrant dishonesty, whether we are talking about the commitments made with respect to ATIP that are now being ignored, the commitments made with respect to electoral reform now being ignored, balanced budgets now being ignored, or the protection of small business now being ignored. There are many other less publicized but still important examples of the government not respecting its commitments.
The Liberals stand up before voters and tell them what they are going to do, but as soon as they get into power, they come up with all kinds of excuses. On the economy, they usually say the situation has changed, that they did not quite anticipate how bad things were, but we could look at all of the independent analyses that say the budget was balanced before the Liberals came to power. The information that shows there was a surplus when the Liberals took power was there, and it is still clearly there.
With respect to ATIP, there is just no explanation, because there is no plausible claim that circumstances on the ground have changed. We are not talking about something that changes without the government changing it. The Liberals are making a decision to renege on their promise.
In the time I have left, I would like to highlight one more time that the government can refuse any ATIP request. Its only justification has to be that it suspects the good faith of the person making that request. I suspect that after this legislation passes, we will have many opposition ATIPs, many civil society ATIPs, many media ATIPs for which the motivation of those putting them forward will be suspect.
In a free society, government does not deny people information because it does not think their motives are pure enough. That is not how open government is supposed to work. That is not how government builds trust.
On that basis, we are opposing this bill.
Joyce Murray LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board
Mr. Speaker, the remarks from the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan give me yet another opportunity to celebrate the fact that our government is keeping its promise made in the election by putting forward amendments to the Access to Information Act—for the first time in 34 years, I would remind the member opposite—and doing essentially what we had promised, which is giving order-making powers to the commissioner, making investments to improve timeliness, and putting the Prime Minister's Office, ministers' offices, and many other offices under the act through the proactive disclosure measures that will address the kinds of information that are most frequently requested in access to information, thereby reducing the gumming-up of the system.
It is also important to contrast what our government is doing with what the previous government did. The member may not have been there. I would like to draw his attention to the Information Commissioner's report of 2014 and her findings and recommendations, in which she investigated interference by political staff in the access to information process. Her first main conclusion is that there was improper involvement of ministerial staff members in the processing of five out of the eight access requests that she was sampling and reviewing in depth.
This is a case in which ministerial staff who had no authorization were rescinding the provision of information that the ATIP staff people had already agreed to disclose.
Second, what was also happening was a failure to comply with statutory duty to assist. For the member's information, just to make sure he has a balanced view of what is going on here, the ministerial staff who were not authorized in any way to be involved with this were holding up access to information packages that had been prepared by the department and were ready to go. They were holding them up from five days to a month for political reasons.
I could go on, but I would like to ask the member a question on this very constructive approach to reviewing and revising this act. Will he be part of a positive approach in terms of fine-tuning and bringing forward the ideas he has to the committee, where he could present them to a government that actually listens in committee and considers amendments?
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Mr. Speaker, that was an unusual intervention from the parliamentary secretary, to say the least.
She told the House that the government is doing “essentially” what it had promised. I am not sure what “essentially” means in that context, but that appears to be quite a modifier, because clearly the government is not doing what it promised. If it is doing essentially what it promised, perhaps that is supposed to remind us that it is doing the opposite of what it promised.
Let us be very clear: applying proactive disclosure to ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office in certain particular narrow cases is not at all the same or even close to allowing the public to use access to information in ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office in the same way that it would for other parts of government.
In contrast to the clear statements in the Liberal platform, this legislation treats ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office in a completely different way. It does not in any way apply the Access to Information Act to them. It is misleading. What the parliamentary secretary has said is essentially untrue.
I am not going to say that the handling of ATIPs was always perfect under the previous government, although I think the parliamentary secretary exaggerates the point. However, let us be clear about what the legislation is proposing to do. It is proposing to now give the government the power to deny any claim. In other words, it gives them the ability to interfere, to block access to information requests on the basis of specious claims or vexatious claims or bad faith or bad motivations.
The government is changing the nature of the system to make it worse. That is completely different from anything that was even alleged to have happened in the past.
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague's speech, and I share many of his concerns. However, I was taken aback when he said that only a Conservative government can set things right.
We are talking about a bill that has not been amended in 35 years, so I wonder why it is that nothing happened under the Liberals or the Conservatives and why it was not until NDP members introduced bills to update the Access to Information Act in 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2014 that things stabilized.