Mr. Speaker, first I would like to thank the member for Ottawa Centre for splitting his time and for his speech, which I thought was commendable and touched on some of the points that I think need to be raised in the House and have not received the proper attention they need from the government.
Second, as this is my first time to rise in the House, I would like to thank the voters of Skeena—Bulkley Valley who saw fit to place me in this seat again and represent their views. It is from their perspective that I am looking at this voluminous bill which seems to cry out for clarity and attention to detail.
I will be fully transparent with the House. I am ambitious, but I have only made it three-quarters of the way through the bill. I would not want to be disparaging in thinking about how many members who have spoken, particularly from the government ranks, have not read the bill in its entirety as yet. Let us presume they have and have missed a few of the key points that need fixing.
The riding from which I hail is a rural riding in northwestern British Columbia and is extraordinarily beautiful. In that riding are people who bring a great deal of rural Canadian common sense to issues of the day and who ask me to bring some of that perspective to bills like this one that are filled with the obviously necessary legal jargon in order to be presented in the House. Yet in a region like mine, which is just now turning the corner from years of regional economic pain and suffering, a region that is 30% to 35% first nations people with a long and strong history of good governance and sound pride in their culture and tradition, they want a government they can trust.
And gosh, after all these years of watching brown bags pass across tables in Italian restaurants, still there is a kernel of hope in the voting minds of our constituents, who want to believe that this place can become more accountable. They want to believe that the members, and particularly those who do not sit in the seats that represent the cabinet of this country, will in fact represent their interests and not the interests of narrow self-interest groups and lobbyists.
I will break the accountability act into two parts. One part is what is in it and one part is what is not in it. The former shall be quite a bit smaller than the latter. In it is some progress on whistleblowing and some progress on campaign finance reform and crown corporation transparency; that is the government's due. We must again commend the work of Mr. Broadbent for what is not missing. He spent many years in this place and outside this place pushing for many of the reforms that I find in Bill C-2.
This, I believe, is the duty of all members of the House, from all four corners, both opposition and government. It is not simply to stand up and clap ourselves on the back and say, “A job well done and let us get on with it”. It is the duty of all members to look at the bill. Let us look at what the government is proposing and look at believing in the intention that the Prime Minister has spoken about. We must look to see if that intention is true, from the campaign to now, about truly opening up government to the scrutiny of Canadian citizens and their representatives who sit in these seats in this House.
The list is long, but I will try to focus on what is not in this bill, on the pieces in the bill that need either serious reform or an outright new look, and at whether that is presented in another omnibus bill, heaven help us, or in a partial act that comes before the House. Floor-crossing comes immediately to mind.
I listened to the two parliamentary secretaries prior to my speech and found them wanting in their discussion about open and transparent democracy. On the one hand, it was suggested that the bill furthers the cause of democracy and accountability in this country. On the other hand, it was said that it was quite acceptable to appoint someone to the Senate and then drop them into a cabinet seat if the government was unable to win seats in the vicinity of Montreal.
Then, lo and behold, some of its policies and its candidates did not attract the voters in the vicinity of Montreal. Perhaps one should work harder in that direction and not go against the wishes of the Montrealers I know, who find it difficult to believe how an appointed friend of the government helping it run a campaign somehow deserves the honour of sitting at the cabinet table and making decisions on behalf of them when they had no voice and no say in that person's election. I find the hypocrisy in that one statement alone incredible.
Regarding floor crossing, I know there are hon. members present who are interested in this issue. When people cast their ballots in that most sacred and private act which is an election, they make decisions about their future and about the combination of a party's leader, the party's policies and platforms, and the candidate presented in the local riding. Clearly nobody in this place would suggest that our own presence as candidates is enough to sway the majority of voters in our ridings to vote for us alone. It is the combination of what we represent by the parties we sit with and the policies and debates that we engage in, and it is on that combination that voters present their opinions.
To simply take for granted those opinions, that sacred trust placed in the ballot box and decide for ourselves where we should sit in this House, what policies we should be pushing for and what credo we should stand by is hypocrisy that Canadians clearly cannot stand for. It further erodes the confidence people have in the simple act of putting measures in this so-called accountability act, which many Canadians agree with, which simply asks members who choose to no longer sit with a party, however long or short the time has been that they have sat with that party, to sit as independent members. Some independent members have been very effective in this House. In a byelection the members would seek a new mandate under the new party's flag, policies and leader, in order to go forward and do the work they feel is best on behalf of their ridings. It passes the test when I speak about it in various parts of this country and particularly in my home in Skeena--Bulkley Valley.
The biggest hole in this bill in terms of details is access to information that citizens and members of Parliament need to have. Knowledge truly is power when it comes to the dealings of government. While the vast majority of civil servants, the majority of members of Parliament, those sitting in government and otherwise, come to their work with integrity and honesty, there will always be suspicion. Voters and members of Parliament need solid access to information legislation set in law that will allow them the power to wrest information from government, which has its own self-interests as members now sitting in the official opposition can well attest, and bring it to the light of day. My colleague from Winnipeg Centre has said that sunshine is one of the best cleaners we have. The best determinant we could have to proper and just government is full and open transparency.
That brings me to the BlackBerry, the wonderful device that many have become so greatly addicted to. When we look at lobbyist reform, we find that as long as lobbyists conduct themselves via the most popular form of communication available on the Hill, they are not subject to the scrutiny of transparency and openness, but if they make a phone call, perhaps yes, and if they sit down, certainly yes. That seems absolutely silly and obviously is an oversight which I look forward to the government correcting as the bill heads to committee.
Appointments will be the last subject I touch upon. When we raised the issue of floor crossing earlier in this debate, a member of the government stood up and said that lo and behold, some 25 years ago a member from the Progressive Conservatives crossed over to the NDP, that the NDP accepted it at that time for two months prior to an election, and how dare they see the light of day and realize that floor crossing is not such a good idea?
I remember reading a news article about former prime minister Mulroney making 1,250 appointments on his last day in office. That is wrong and Canadians identify that as wrong.
When we look at what the government has done in the three months since being in office with respect to open and transparent appointments of officers and people in positions of authority, one scratches one's head to think that hypocrisy can reign so quickly, that in the 13 years it took to mature into the party that is now the official opposition, the government is now on a fast track and able to pull off such leaps and bounds of reason and logic after three months to entice floor crossers, to appoint senators, to appoint failed candidates to positions of influence and authority and all the benefits they ascribe to.
Again, I take the perspective of the common average citizens from my riding and the common average sense and sensibility they bring as Canadians to what they want to see in government . This bill begins to take us along that path, but clearly, the committee is going to be an interesting place to be. There are some fundamental reforms that need to take place in order for this bill to actually become the piece of legislation we all desire.