Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Davenport.
I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on achieving your exalted position and the manner in which you have been adjudicating our proceedings thus far.
I have a comment with respect to the parliamentary secretary's characterization of taxes. I guess he would fundamentally disagree with Edmund Burke who has said that taxes are the price we pay for our passage toward a better world.
However, the subject at hand is accountability. I noted that the parliamentary secretary did not get into the role that members of Parliament could play in terms of heightening accountability, and I will attempt to address those concepts in my comments.
I am pleased to rise today, as the associate critic for democratic reform, to speak on behalf of all Canadians on the issue of accountability in government. I say I speak on behalf of all Canadians because I am certain that there is not one member, regardless of party, opposition side or government side, who does not believe that we all share a moral and ethical responsibility to extract from every dollar of expenditure a dollar's worth of service and value for the Canadian taxpayer. That should go without saying.
My colleague, the critic for our party, has very capably outlined the challenges facing us as parliamentarians to complete the accountability loop that was begun by the previous government. In order to develop some context for our own discussions and those of other speakers, it might be helpful to reiterate what in fact was done as a result of the sordid litany of transgressions, both professional and political, that were investigated by Justice Gomery.
First, as has been mentioned by my colleague and as a result of testimony provided to both the public accounts committee and Judge Gomery, which exposed the weakness in both internal and external audits back as far as 1995, the Liberal government restored the comptroller general's functions for each department and instituted internal audit policies. The role of the comptroller general had in fact been taken out by a previous Liberal government. The order of checks and balances did not recognize any partisanship. If there were weaknesses and mistakes made, they were made equally by both those governments.
That was changed as a result of the experience in 1995 and 1996 of internal and external audits not being followed up. This is important because what occurred was the systemic breakdown in the architecture of checks and balances. This was followed up by the political exploitation of the contract and award system, which is well documented by Judge Gomery.
To be clear, this was perpetuated by a small number of individuals. As Judge Gomery stated, and I quote once again, as my colleague did:
Canadians should not forget that the vast majority of our public officials and politicians do their work honestly, diligently and effectively, and emerge from this Inquiry free of any blame.
The government's accountability legislation picks up in several other areas where the foundation for accountability was laid, such as the continuation of the reform of financing for political parties, strengthening the role of the Ethics Commissioner, making qualified government appointments and cleaning up government polling and advertising. All of these were works in progress and are worthy of support.
Other parts of the bill have implications that warrant further review and should be sent to committee for further deliberation. I speak of two recommendations that both appear to be unduly bureaucratic. In fact, they cloud the historic and well-tried traditions of our parliamentary and justice system in a manner that is contradictory to the objectives of the government.
I am referring to the government's recommendation to create a “director of public prosecutions”. That unnecessarily and even seriously collides with the responsibilities of the Attorney General and even by its definition and characterization implicates on the time-tested principle of natural justice. Those believing in natural justice and human rights and equality before the law should be concerned with respect to the creation of a director of public prosecutions.
The other recommendation that deserves the even-handed treatment of committee is the establishment of a parliamentary budget authority. While the reasons given are laudable, and I quote from the bill, to “ensure truth in budgeting” and “to provide objective analysis to members of Parliament and parliamentary committees concerning the state of the nation's finances, trends in the national economy, and the financial cost of proposals under consideration by either house”, the advantages in creating yet another level of fiscal bureaucracy must be measured against whether the oversight capacity of committees as recommended by Judge Gomery and the Auditor General are in fact being vigorously enhanced by this recommendation to create a parliamentary budget authority.
It is my opinion that members of Parliament cannot and should not delegate away their accountability to what is becoming an ever more complex and intricate array of bureaucratic watchdogs. I believe it was Winston Churchill who said, “Watchdogs? Why yes, but who will watch the dogs?”
I would like to close by reminding Parliament most humbly that there was another work in progress that at least to some extent implicated on those abuses that were uncovered by the Auditor General and Judge Gomery. I am referring to the existence of what was described as a democratic deficit, where it was suggested that parliamentarians were either deliberately shut out or naively shutting themselves out of the process of policy development, evaluation and accountability.
In my short time in the House I have witnessed the efforts of all parties to take back responsibilities from unelected mandarins, lobbyists and the like that had been delegated away. Just one example of this trend was the establishment of the estimates approval process through the standing committee structure. As chairman of the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, I also found myself along with members querying whether the committee was being provided with the necessary investigative tools to carry out this responsibility with the capacity to follow through.
Under the mantra of parliamentary accountability much has been, and through this bill will be, accomplished. Let me make this one observation for the consideration of all hon. members. Let us not in combating the aberration of deceit, corruption and maladministration, pervasively create a culture where we forget that our parliamentary system is the foundation upon which the political, social and economic landscape of our country has been built. By all means let us do all within our power to assure Canadians that those parliamentary institutions and values are dynamic, democratic and flexible enough to reflect and protect the public trust.
This piece of legislation, if addressed in both manner of process and substance as I have tried to outline today, will be yet another step in that direction of accountability that Canadians want to see us take. Most important, it will empower their elected representatives to deliver on their great expectation to protect the public trust.
