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.
