Mr. Speaker, the basis of this so-called accountability bill rests on something that I will refer to as the big lie. It is the false premise that government is corrupt and cannot be trusted and somehow that Ottawa needs to be “cleaned up”. The Conservatives managed to successfully ride that false premise into government.
Indeed, the accountability bill has everything to do with political strategy and nothing to do with accountability. True accountability is being confused with conduct. I think the strategy of the Prime Minister is if we repeat accountability often enough, something that we all agree on, it sounds good and we confuse it with conduct, that somehow we can put a bill through that is simply going to be adopted by all parties, including the opposition because no one will have the courage to call it what it really is.
Justice Gomery said that the vast majority of elected officials in the House, in Parliament and in government are honest, hard-working, diligent individuals who carry out their duties. That is the truth of the matter.
The bill sounds good on the surface but has, as I said before, very little to do with true accountability. It has to do with conduct. It will cause gridlock. It will cause a series of ritual and expensive investigations into what takes place in Parliament and will not serve the public well at all. It will cost taxpayers money. It will draw down the ability of this place to work effectively in the interests of the public.
It is interesting that in this particular bill there is not a single definition of what accountability is. That is remarkable. What is accountability? Let me quote a national authority, a gentleman who used to work in the Auditor General's office, Mr. Henry McCandless. He is an expert in public accountability. He said that responsibility means the obligation to act; conduct is the manner of carrying out a responsibility; accountability means the obligation to explain how responsibilities are being carried out.
That is what accountability is. That is not listed anywhere in the bill because the so-called accountability bill has to do with conduct and not true accountability.
In plain common language, accountability is the obligation of persons to explain fully and fairly how they are carrying out their duties and responsibilities to the public.
It also requires a set of reporting requirements on performance and that too is absent from the bill. Does this make a difference? Does this misrepresentation of true accountability make a difference in how this place works in the interests of the public?
Members have spoken about the issue of trust. Indeed true accountability is intimately entwined with trust. Trust is a function of a government's account to its citizens. A government must account and explain to the public what it is doing and why it is doing it before it does it. There are sufficient performance and accountability measures on top of that.
If that occurred, if the bill could be crafted in such a way, then the government would be doing something that has not truly been done before. It would be putting forth a bill that dealt with true public accountability.
When citizens understand quite fully what a government is doing, then citizens can either support that government, can alter the actions of the government, or can defeat the government. That is the basis of true accountability and that is the basis of trust. If the government wants trust and wants the public to actually trust it in what it is doing, then it would pay heed to what true accountability is and would include that true public accountability in the essence of the bill.
The bill contains a series of auditors which will cause gridlock: the parliamentary budget officers, the procurement auditor, the director of public prosecutions, a whistleblower system that pays money to public servants and will cause fear and paranoia in our public service. It will cause gridlock in the system. All of those auditors imply that the current system is not working and that the government does not trust the current auditors.
With respect to the sponsorship issue, people broke the rules. Was there a problem with the rules? The Auditor General was very clear and said there was no problem with the rules. The rules were there and they were broken.
Right now our public service, indeed our government, is mired in a lengthy overweening sense of obligation with respect to procurement. It is too slow, too complex and too expensive. It needs to be streamlined. As defence minister, the current Leader of the Opposition did that very well.
The Prime Minister has introduced a bill that has nothing to do with accountability. He has actually broken the rules on accountability on a number of counts himself. For example, he muzzles his cabinet and his MPs. He restricts the ability of the press to do its job. He appointed an individual as Minister of Public Works and yet that minister does not sit in the House. That ministry is responsible for spending billions of dollars of the public's money. Shielding a minister of the Crown, who is responsible for spending billions of dollars of the public's money from questions in the House, so he cannot account to the public freely and openly is an egregious violation of true public accountability. Nothing in the bill says anything to that practice. That particular appointment shields that individual from questions in the House and the right of the public to know what is taking place within the Department of Public Works and the spending that occurs there.
With respect to the issue of funding, we restricted public funding quite significantly, $5,000 from individual donations and $1,000 from corporations. The bill says nothing about third party funding from special interest groups and this is critically important. Bill C-2 is a political bill as opposed to one in the interests of the public service and the public. The bill would actually restrict the ability of political parties to do their job and restrict the public's ability to have their wishes and their views expressed through the people they elect.
Can a corporation buy influence from a member of Parliament for $1,000? I do not think so. Not at all. I have never been offered any money and I do not know anybody in the House, regardless of political stripe, who has been offered money. Could someone possibly gain influence by making a $5,000 donation or a $1,000 donation? That is what we implemented when we were in government. The government of today will not restrict third party funding that could have undue influence on governments or political parties. This is a critical absence in the bill.
This particular bill says nothing about true public accountability. It is going to put true public accountability back more than 20 years. This is a political bill, not a bill in the interests of the public. This bill is overweening and overkill and is going to damage public accountability.
I would beseech the government to listen to the comments that have been made here today and to listen to the true public accountability experts like Henry McCandless and others who are working or have worked in the Auditor General's Office or in academia. The government should put a bill forward that would truly deal with public accountability and in doing so, the government would be doing something that has not been done in 20 years. To say that Ottawa is corrupt and needs to be changed does a huge disservice to what we do as members of Parliament. It also does an enormous disservice to public servants.
