John Bryden

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 11th, 2000]

Yes, yes.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague for bringing children into this debate because I, too, feel very strongly that this legislation has an enormous impact on children. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why I support it.

It finally defines same sex relationships as being outside marriage and because it defines, at last, marriage as being a lawful union of a man and woman, it creates a situation where, all things being equal, a child has the right to have heterosexual parents rather than same sex parents.

The difficulty in my view was that the courts were poised, up until this legislation, to define marriage as a same sex relationship. Had they done that, they would have extinguished the rights of a child, all things being equal, between a same sex couple as parents and an opposite sex couple being parents, to have heterosexual parents as the choice.

What happens now with this legislation is that it does not exclude same sex partners from adopting children. What it does, though, is it makes sure that the authorities have the discretion to make the choice between same sex parents or opposite sex parents.

I have never been one who was prepared, in the interests of expanding the rights of one group, to extinguish the rights of another, especially children.

It is true that this legislation is imperfect. I agree to some degree with the opposition that what it really ought to be about should be dependent partners. Sex should in no way be involved in this legislation. However, we had to move for the children because the courts were poised to determine that a marriage or a spouse would be an opposite sex relationship. If they had done that, then the right of a child to have heterosexual parents over same sex parents would have been extinguished.

This is not to say that same sex parents cannot be good parents. However, we do not know yet if heterosexual parents are absolutely equal to same sex parents. It does appear to us far more natural to have opposite sex parents. I should say far more normal because, whatever we are, we are all creations of nature or creations of God. I do not accept that it is unnatural to be homosexual. We are what we are, but it is certainly, shall we say, not normal as parents to be a man and a man or a woman and a woman, which is what this legislation addresses. It makes sure that, all things being equal, that children have the right to be adopted first and foremost by heterosexual parents as opposed to homosexual parents.

I would appreciate it if my colleague would comment on those remarks.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 11th, 2000]

I repeat, Mr. Speaker, my view is that once you get the definition of marriage in law and once you get the definition of same sex couples as being outside marriage in law, that is enough.

The only reason the 19 on this side were not onside with the government and supported the member for Scarborough Southwest was because they are not confident that the lawyers and perhaps even the justice department will cite this clause in Bill C-23 when the issue of defining marriage or defining same sex partnerships comes up. It is sad. It is wrong. It is unfortunate because we should have confidence that the laws we pass will be applied and will be defended adequately in the courts.

I would argue that this is one of the problems we have with the supreme court interpreting the charter. It is not that the supreme court is not doing its job; the real question is whether the interests of parliament are being defended adequately before the supreme court. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, those who are defending the interests of parliament are the very people who wrote the laws in the first place and are the very ones who advised the justice minister in the first place.

What I am suggesting is that we have to re-examine the relationship of the justice department in the creation of the laws and the defence of the laws. I think we have to look at this whole issue and I suggest to members opposite that maybe it could be a motion for an opposition day. I cannot do it.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, what I said was that there is a certain lack of confidence that the justice department officials will deal with these issues impartially.

In fact, what I said was that this is a very fine bill in the sense that it does define marriage and that it does define same sex relationships outside marriage. The unfortunate thing is that there is a school of feeling on my own side that the lawyers, and particularly the justice department, will not defend this clause defining marriage when it comes up in other legislation.

What I was trying to point out was that I think we have a problem where we have a justice department that creates the laws, advises the minister and then defends the laws. I think it is fair to say that it is generally felt, there is a general feeling on all sides of the House, that the justice department is not always acting on behalf of parliament, but acting more on behalf of its interpretation of the charter rather than the interpretation of the charter as represented by the representatives of the people.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this debate in another direction, in a direction that I hope members opposite, indeed all members, will be interested to hear.

I begin by saying that I support this bill. I support this bill because it does what needs to be done, and what needs to be done and why this bill exists in the first place is that it defines same sex relationships as outside marriage and it defines marriage as the lawful union of one man and one woman. I support it. It is there.

The question I bring forward is that while the opposition, obviously being the opposition it must oppose the bill, this is right and proper and it has to find all the means to oppose the bill, I would like to concentrate my remarks on the fact that 19 members of my own party voted against the report stage motion yesterday. There is a good chance those same 19 Liberals—maybe more, maybe less—will vote against this legislation when it comes before the House tonight.

I have great respect for my colleagues. I think it may be of great interest to you, Mr. Speaker, to comprehend why some of us who share exactly the same values, the same Liberal values if you will, the same values about family, and the same concerns about protecting the traditional definition of marriage and so on and so forth, would vote against this legislation, which I believe is very good legislation, and some would vote for it on this side exclusively.

We have to go back a bit to understand where this bill comes from. I am one of the ones who promoted it originally. The reason I promoted it was because it was becoming very clear that unless parliament acted the courts were going to define marriage and spouse as a same sex relationship. It was coming. It was occurring at the Ontario Court of Appeal level and in various other court cases. This has been a fear of mine for a very long time.

The first time I voted against my own government was when I voted against Bill C-33 when it came up in 1995. I voted against my government because it failed in that legislation to define marriage and to define a same sex relationship in the context of a legally married relationship. I voted against that legislation precisely because it left it to the courts. Finally, this bill produces the definitions.

Incidentally, Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with a colleague.

Let me examine what happened yesterday. The 19 Liberals who voted against the government voted on Motion No. 5, moved by the member for Scarborough Southwest. The member's motion, which was echoed by other motions from the opposition, would have had the definition of marriage as the lawful union of one man and one woman, which is in the bill, repeated in every piece of legislation that the bill affects. In other words, this is an omnibus bill and it affects 68 other statutes. It defines in those statutes that same sex partnerships, for the purposes of benefits or anything else, are to be seen in the same sense as a common law partnership. That should have been sufficient, but the member for Scarborough Southwest felt that this should be repeated in every bit of legislation.

I take the position that to have marriage defined in law when it was only defined in common law is a huge step forward. In fact, by all analyses, that should be sufficient to guarantee that marriage legally is only a heterosexual relationship. So why did the member for Scarborough Southwest feel it was so important to repeat this in every statute affected by Bill C-23?

I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, he did it because he does not trust the courts to interpret or to see this definition of marriage that exists in Bill C-23. He does not trust the courts in future arbitrations that will involve the definition of marriage to pay due attention to the piece of legislation that we have passed.

Why does he take that position? This is the bad news, and it is very unfortunate. I hope the justice minister and all Canadians are listening. The reality is that members on this side of the House no longer trust our own justice department. The problem is that on this side of the House there is a sense that people in the justice department are resisting common sense measures to define issues like this because they have some kind of secret agenda. I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that I have heard time and time again on this side of the House, on all kinds of legislation, the observation that we cannot trust the impartiality of justice department officials.

I really hesitate to say that because a great many of the justice department officials are very competent and very sincere in what they do. But there is no question that an element of suspicion has been created among parliamentarians and the justice department.

There are many examples. It goes back to the original gun control bill. It was one thing to have legislation creating a scheme for controlling firearms, but what we found on this side of the House was that it was very difficult to get even the most common sense amendments to that legislation. Then, there are countless other examples since I have been a parliamentarian since 1993.

There was a bill on electronic monitoring that would have enabled the authorities to affix a transmitter to a person who was never even charged with a crime. There were bills that limited the rights of the accused to get the documents of his accusers when it was a case of a sexual assault charge.

Even in this very same bill that we have before us, in my original speech at second reading I suggested that we change the word “conjugal” to “sexual intimacy”, because “conjugal” was used by error in the wrong sense by a judge who did not know language sufficiently well. Yet the justice department, which could have made the change and could have made everyone feel better, opted to carry on with the word “conjugal”, which in fact implies a heterosexual relationship.

The unfortunate thing that we have before us is legislation that is good. It does do what needs to be done. It does define marriage and it does give benefits to same sex couples in a way that does not conflict with traditional values. But we have this feeling on this side of the House that this bill is not as perfect, is not as complete, is not as polished and as well aimed as it could be because we believe, or some believe on this side of the House, that there is some kind of hidden agenda which means that later on the justice department may take this to court. Because the justice department creates laws in the House, it also defends them.

So we have this very uneasy situation that worries a lot of us around here, that we are not entirely certain that the people who produce the legislation for the government, who advise the government on its legislation, are indeed as impartial as they should be.

I hope that the justice minister thinks about this, and that the justice department officials themselves think about this, because this criticism is long overdue. I am sorry it has to appear on a piece of legislation that, in my mind, is excellent legislation. It brings back to parliament the definition of marriage and the definition of same sex relationships. It is exactly what parliament should have done long ago, but unfortunately the optics are not what they should be because perhaps the legislation is not as thoroughly aimed as it could have been. In that sense, the 19 members on this side of the House who are not willing to support this legislation do have a point, and I regret that is the situation.

[Access To Information Act, April 7th, 2000]

moved that Bill C-206, an act to amend the Access to Information Act and to make amendments to others acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to rise and to speak to this, my private member's bill to reform the Access to Information Act. The bill has a very long history and it has been quite a struggle to get it to this point where it is being debated before the House.

I believe that Bill C-206 is legislation that has the potential of dramatically changing how government operates. Indeed, I believe Bill C-206, because of the new standards of transparency it would bring to government operations, could put Canada in the forefront of not only transparency, but in the forefront of the efficiency of the delivery of government services and, if you will, the spending of taxpayers' money.

The world has changed since the Access to Information Act was first introduced 17 years ago. It has changed in the sense that we now have the Internet, we now have different procedures of accounting and we now have the potential of putting documents that are generated by the government on the Internet for the entire world to see almost as soon as they are generated.

In order to take advantage of that potential we will have to modernize the Access to Information Act which, at the time it came in, was very, very good legislation, but over time has become more and more an instrument to retain government documents rather than to open government documents.

I became interested in this issue as soon as I became elected for the first time in 1993, and in 1994 and 1995 pressed the Department of Justice and the then justice minister to make reforms to the Access to Information Act.

Despite the various recommendations I made, those reforms were not forthcoming, and I soon came to realize that it was not the lack of will on the part of the justice minister of the day. The problem was that freedom of information, if you will, is something that affects every government ministry. Unfortunately, all government legislation emanates from the Department of Justice. That is not bad in itself, but the Department of Justice of course, because it is composed primarily of lawyers, would tend to opt for withholding information or protecting information rather than discovering ways of openness.

Moreover, I realized that in legislation like this it would be impossible to get consensus across all the government departments. Can hon. members imagine, even from the Department of Justice, trying to get the approval for various prospects of change in the Access to Information Act? We would have to consult every government ministry, and not only would we have to consult with the deputy ministers, we would have to consult the ministers themselves. So I realized that the real reason why there would be no progress in reforming the Access to Information Act was the simple reality that it was almost impossible to do it with the kind of consensus that the bureaucracies normally operate when they develop legislation. Therefore, I undertook to write it myself.

I hired legislative counsel and we sat down together in my office at my desk. Side by side we went through the existing legislation and made the changes.

There has been some criticism to the effect that legislation of this importance should not be developed from Private Members' Business. The argument is that this should be put out in a forum, debated, there should be committees struck and so on and so forth, and another consensus developed. Indeed the current access to information commissioner has suggested just that. I think the justice minister at one point in time suggested that perhaps there has to be another round table to examine the reforms to the current Access to Information Act.

In making the reforms that I did make that are in the bill, what I relied upon was the recommendations that emanated in the 1993-94 reports of the then information commissioner who had more than a decade with the act. He also derived his recommendations from another parliamentary committee that studied reforming the act.

In other words, the recommendations that we see in this bill, the changes, the amendments that we see in the bill before us are actually derived for the most part from 10 to 12 years of consultation with the stakeholders, by not only previous MPs but by the access to information commissioner of longstanding, Mr. John Grace.

What we find in this bill are things that are directly from the recommendations made by these groups. That involves, to summarize, things like opening up crown corporations because of course crown corporations use the taxpayers' money and they should be subject to the same amount of transparency as exists with government departments, opening up opinion polls and opening up, which is quite controversial, some of the contractual arrangements between third parties. There is a great concern that when the government enters into negotiations or bidding contracts with private enterprise, it is sometimes in the public interest to know the details of those various proposals.

One of the things that I introduced, as my own contribution to the bill, is that all government documents more than 30 years old should be automatically released unless there is a very apparent threat to national security or public safety. That actually conforms to something that was done not too long ago in the United States.

One of the most dramatic changes in the legislation that is before the House now is the total elimination of schedule II. Schedule II in the old act is a list of exemptions. It started out with five or six when the act was first passed and it has since grown to 42 exemptions from the scrutiny by the Access to Information Act. One of my amendments eliminates that schedule II entirely.

What that means is that every piece of legislation, like the Income Tax Act or any other legislation that has a section protecting information, that section has to be subject to the test of the Access to Information Act, the changed Access to Information Act. When I came to examine how to change the act, one of the things I tried to do was to develop a theme that runs through the act that gives the public service guidance in what to open and what to close.

That theme is that information should be only withheld if there genuinely is a concern with respect to the national interest, public safety or public security. There is an injury test that runs right through the changes that we see before us.

This is all dramatic stuff. In making changes like that, I had to consider how I could possibly bring it forward. The tradition of freedom of information legislation around the world is that it is very difficult to get it through legislatures because there is so much self-interest by some government departments and by some ministers perhaps. It is always difficult to overcome the political hurdles to move this kind of legislation forward. Actually, the word is fear. While we all speak of transparency, while we all speak of openness, while we all love to speak about these words as politicians, in fact though, even we as MPs sometimes are fearful about seeing everything we do open to the public. I believe improperly so because in the end transparency is good for everyone. Nevertheless, there is fear.

My first problem to advance this as private member's legislation was how to force my own government, the cabinet and the executive branch of my party to take this legislation seriously, to not discard it and to not turn away from it.

Therefore, the very first amendment in Bill C-206 is to change the name from the Access to Information Act to the open government act. How can any politician turn his or her back on legislation that calls for transparency and puts transparency in the very title?

The next amendment establishes the theme which is in the interests of government efficiency so the people can see how taxpayer money is spent. The government should try to opt for openness wherever possible.

The default mode of the current Access to Information Act is to withhold. The default mode in my open government act is to disclose, the idea being if in doubt, the bureaucrat should release the information, not withhold it. This theme I hope runs right through it.

What is being called for is a change in cultural attitude in the bureaucracy and in the executive leadership of the government. We should be always thinking in terms of what we can disclose, not in terms of what we can withhold. Openness is a kind of contract. One cannot take the position that everything must be open because the government has to operate. The government has to have necessary secrets.

When I came to look at all these amendments, and I think there are some 42 amendments to the Access to Information Act, I tried to pay attention to the needs of government to function. I tried to make sure that the provisions as to why a document should be withheld were very, very clear. Consequently, members will see, for example, concepts like certain documents can be withheld if it is in the government's monetary interest or if it is in the interest of public safety or cabinet function. So it goes.

In the end, the government can pass whatever kind of legislation it wants, but if we do not have broad agreement from those who are going to be affected by the legislation, the legislation is not going to work.

I must tell you right at the outset that, while I enjoy tremendous support from the backbenchers here, there is no guarantee that the frontbenchers of my own side are in favour of this legislation. I am sure some are, I am sure some are not.

So the evolution of this bill is going to be the debate in this Chamber. Even more important, because it can be stretched out over a longer period and can be gotten into in greater depth, will be the time that this bill will spend in committee.

Just to go a little further, having presented the bill with all these changes and in particular the change to the open government act at first reading, I still had the dilemma of how to move it forward. Then, as chance would have it, there was a change in the standing orders to the effect that if one could get a hundred seconders to a private member's bill, that bill could bypass the lottery.

I think I am probably the first person to take advantage of the rule change and I did get a hundred seconders for the bill to bypass the lottery. Those seconders, I should say, were principally from my own side, of course, and as required by the rule change, from at least two opposition parties. At that time, the seconders were from the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois.

Mr. Speaker, if ever there was a doubt about the utility of that change in the standing orders, I can tell you that when I had those 100 signatures, then everyone paid attention to Bill C-206, which was then Bill C-264 but is Bill C-206 now.

Then I had representations coming from the bureaucracy. I had Statistics Canada wanting to visit to explain why it needed a special exemption. I had the justice department come forward to make some very, very helpful suggestions. I had representations from the privy council office. They wanted to get in on it as well.

The reason that I suddenly got this serious attention from the bureaucracy was that the 100 seconders meant that this bill had a very, very high chance of going forward.

I took advantage of the advice I got at that time, and it got me into trouble in the end, I have to say, but I did take advantage of it because some of the advice was very good in my eyes. I thought it would solve the problem of the debate, when the bill finally got to committee, being derailed toward avenues which were not constructive.

I will give an example of one of the changes that was proposed. In my original legislation, Bill C-264, at first reading I proposed opening up the House of Commons and the Senate; everything that you, Mr. Speaker, might have, financial records and that kind of thing. The justice department people pointed out to me that I probably stood a good chance of losing the entire support of all my backbench MPs because the way I phrased that particular clause would have opened up the private files of individual members.

So one of the changes I made as a result was to eliminate that particular clause from the original version of the bill and transfer it, as you will see, into an amendment to the Parliament of Canada Act, which basically applies, thereby, only to the financial records of the House of Commons and the Senate, but not to the private records of members of parliament.

That kind of change I thought was in my interests and in the interests of the House of Commons, to change if I could, by unanimous consent, which I brought forward in June of 1997, and I did get unanimous consent to make that change. There was another change with respect to cabinet confidences. I can explain that in further detail either now or at another time.

The change that caused all the controversy, which I did not think was a very important change at all, was a change that gave the government the clear option of withholding documents if they were planning documents pertaining to the possibility of the secession of a province.

Much to my surprise, the Reform Party challenged that particular change on a point of privilege and required me to get all my 100 signatures again. I did get those signatures, but the sad part of that challenge, and I think it is a basic misunderstanding, is that particular change only reflected what already exists. It reflects what exists in the Quebec freedom of information law, because the Quebec legislation has similar protections for that kind of thing.

I thought I was doing something that was a mild change, but unfortunately, I feel that it was misunderstood by the Reform Party and probably, to a certain degree, poisoned my relations—or this bill's relations—with the Bloc Quebecois.

I am hoping as the debate goes on that the Bloc Quebecois will see that this change did not materially affect the legislation, it is not unreasonable, and that they will come back onside and examine this bill, Bill C-206, for the merits it really has, because I would really like to see broad support, not just two parties or three parties, I would like to see all five parties in the House, the backbench MPs here and all the opposition MPs—reasonably all the opposition MPs—get behind this legislation and make whatever changes are necessary to make it workable.

There are problems in the legislation. It is not perfect. There are areas that have to be developed and examined in committee. There may be some questions about whether I went too far in my changes to cabinet confidences. There has been some concern about giving the department the power to refuse frivolous requests. That was a proposal from the access commissioner.

Some concern has been expressed about forcing people who constantly use the service to pay a certain portion. The people who use the access to information law, or the open government law, when they use it for private or personal gain, for profit, my bill provides that they receive a certain charge for service, whereas people who use the open government legislation in the public interest would be charged nothing at all. There would be no user fee whatsoever. These are things that have to be clarified and debated.

Probably one of the most contentious things that I would like to see the committee examine is the clause dealing with solicitor-client privilege. As recommended by the access to information commissioner, in my original version of this bill I eliminated the exemption for solicitor-client privilege. I put it back in the new version. I am not sure that was a good idea. This is what my colleagues have to examine.

I have tried to do something that I think is in the interests of all Canadians and in the interest of government. If this legislation goes through, with whatever amendments we agree upon, in the end we will have the best freedom of information legislation in the world. I have compared this with the freedom of information legislation in the United States and we would be miles ahead. If we are ahead, the government will be miles ahead because transparency leads to accountability and accountability leads to efficiency.

[Supply, April 4th, 2000]

I do so.

[Supply, April 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I followed the member's speech with great attention, but I found myself losing the thread slightly in the sense that he seemed to be speaking about financial audits and which numbers count.

He will realize, of course, that anyone who has anything to do with reading the annual reports of any type of company, incorporated or otherwise, will know that often these financial audits tell us very little, other than the fact that money came in, money went out and there was no criminality or fraud involved.

It seems to me, when we look at HRDC, that what we are talking about and what we want from government are the results of performance audits. The whole kerfuffle about HRDC is not about the actual moneys spent; it is whether or not the moneys were spent effectively and properly, whether the proper records were kept and whether there was proper management of the moneys. It seems to me we are talking about two things.

When he is talking about numbers, is he not really criticizing public accounts record keeping, criticizing the estimates and the way the government keeps the estimates? If he is, I would agree with him that work has to be done there. However, I am not sure that this motion is really focused in quite the right direction if it is the numbers which concern him.

[Supply, April 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member opposite for his reasoned reply. We have over 70 backbenchers on the Liberal side who are supporting it and about 40 members or so on the opposition side. Therefore, the will is here.

I have to stress that I am a legislator too. It is not just the government that passes laws or creates laws, it is we backbenchers. In fact we are the very bread and butter of the laws. It is right and proper for a bill of this type, of this nature, of this importance to come from the backbench. There is nothing wrong with that. Why should we always rely on the government to have the initiative? Why can we not band together and do good things around this place?

[Supply, April 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, did I really hear right? I do believe the member opposite said that the government is deceiving the people by giving them too much information, too many numbers. That is exactly what he said. I must say he really underestimates the Canadian public because there are lots of people who have computers. He may not know about computers but there are lots of people with computers who can crunch numbers and check the government's numbers if we can only get them out to them.

I listened to the member carefully when he talked about blank spaces in the documents he was getting via access to information. This is not a problem that exists with government, it is a problem that exists with legislation that needs to be reformed. If he wants that information, then he should get on board with the rest of the backbench MPs and change the Access to Information Act into an open government act so we can get that information. He should get on board rather than sitting here whining in the House and blaming the government when in fact it is his Reform Party's lack of initiative, lack of getting behind the private members who are trying to change the way government operates, trying to make government open. I do not know why he simply stands here and complains when he could get on board with the rest of the MPs on both sides of the House and make a difference.