Pierre Poilievre

[Federal Accountability Act, April 25th, 2006]

I will consider that, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to point out the factual mistakes that the member has made.

[Federal Accountability Act, April 25th, 2006]

Yes, Mr. Speaker. I said that the hon. member was not renowned for telling the truth and I stand by those remarks.

[Federal Accountability Act, April 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the hon. member agrees with me that accountability is about telling the truth, something for which the member for Pickering—Scarborough East is not particularly renowned.

To start off with, he has--

[Federal Accountability Act, April 25th, 2006]

What happened to them?

[Federal Accountability Act, April 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I note that the member criticized the approach of the government with respect to cracking down on the pervasive culture of lobbyists who exerted undue influence in the previous government. He himself of course was a lobbyist. Immediately after leaving office he entered that sector, stayed in it, and now he is coming before the House of Commons and criticizing our legislation which seeks to regulate and control, with some degree of accountability, that sector.

We are taking steps to make public the number of meetings that occur between lobbyists and ministers, to end the revolving door between ministers' offices and lobby firms, and to institute a cooling-off period of five years from the time people leave a minister's office until the time they can begin lobbying that minister's office.

These are real steps. In fact, the Ottawa Citizen has called them a cultural revolution. The National Post called them the most sweeping ethics changes in a generation. The Globe and Mail said that clean does not get any squeakier.

Why will this member of the House and former lobbyist not stand now and affirm that he will support the accountability act, fall in line with what his other party members have finally said, and affirm his support for this, the toughest anti-corruption law in Canadian history?

[Federal Accountability Act, April 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his very informative remarks and for his very committed work, in particular to protect whistleblowers, as he strives to better represent the thousands of public servants who live in his constituency.

He said in the closing portion of his remarks that he was concerned about the tribunal process we have in place to protect whistleblowers. That process includes a group of judges who are active in part of the judiciary, who would listen to grievances by whistleblowers, offer restoration where necessary and discipline where they must.

He questions the independence of that process given the fact that the Prime Minister would choose the judges who would be involved in the tribunal. In the very next breath, he said he wants to use those same judges through the court system. If he questions the independence of judges who form, evidently, the basis of our judiciary when it comes to the tribunal, why is he perfectly willing to accept judges in the courtroom as the protectors of whistleblowers?

[Federal Accountability Act, April 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member poses a number of interesting, though not particularly congruent questions. I will respond to them, as best I can, one by one.

To begin with, he referred to a fee to be paid to whistleblowers. The fee proposed in the accountability act, for those who come forward and take courageous action to expose waste and corruption, is designed to recognize the enormous sacrifice that any whistleblower makes, regardless of what protections we put in place. An example of where a fee exists is with Crime Stoppers, which has awards for people who come forward and expose a crime leading to a conviction. There is nothing wrong with this principle. If members do not agree with it, they can easily amend it out at committee.

As for consultation, we consulted with all kinds of groups, groups that were never included before in discussions on accountability. We brought their views forward, and we have implemented them in this law.

I do not think we should be attacking members of other parties who have supported this act. They have stood forward and taken the courageous and bold step that we need this law passed into statutory law by this summer. I hope that member and his party will support the initiative.

[Federal Accountability Act, April 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it would be intellectually dishonest of me to say that one act of Parliament alone could permanently prevent any scandal from occurring in government. What I can say is that had the accountability act been in place when the Liberal ad scam occurred, it would have been caught much sooner and punished much more swiftly.

I will give some examples. Allan Cutler would have had the ability to go to an independent officer of Parliament and report the scandal, theft and fraud that was transpiring with the sponsorship program. That independent officer of Parliament would have been forced, within 60 days, to report that wrongdoing to Parliament, meaning the public would have known of the wrongdoing within 60 days of the commissioner confirming it. In other words, the public would have known many years before what kind of fraud the Liberal Party was carrying out.That fraud, therefore, could have been stopped in its tracks. All the advertising firms that got money after Allan Cutler had originally come forward internally, we might have been able to have stopped, saving hundreds of millions of Canadian tax dollars as a result.

This is the toughest anti-corruption law in Canadian history. I thank the member for all of his work in helping to bring it about.

[Federal Accountability Act, April 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the first question the member poses is with regard to the recording of meetings between lobbyists and public office holders. I will explain to him why this is so important.

The accountability act stipulates that lobbyists must report every meeting they have with a public office holder and that the records of those meetings, date, time and frequency, will be published on a website so that the public knows who is influencing the government. What if we had a health minister that met 150 times in one year with a tobacco industry? I think the public would want to know about that. We want to know who is influencing our government.

As for his particular question, would groups like the National Citizens' Coalition and the Sierra Club be forced to register all their meetings with particular public office holders? Generally speaking, we are talking instead about lobbyists who are paid and have a commercial interest in advancing a public policy cause, which is distinct from advocacy groups which generally advocate in favour of broader principles such as environmentalism or accountability, depending on the group.

The second question related to protection of whistleblowers. There is nothing in this law that would specifically restrict the ability of a public servant to speak out on matters of public policy. All the rights that currently exist for public servants to do that would continue to exist after the passage of the accountability act. However, it would specifically protect public servants who expose wrongdoing. The act is very specific in how it defines wrongdoing.

In other words, a public servant would not be able to use this act as justification for blocking a government's agenda, a public policy decision, but rather would be able to speak out if he or she witnesses waste of public funds, infraction of rules that have been passed by the House of Commons, violation of policy, and a whole series of other clearly defined acts of wrongdoing. Those would be protected disclosures. This law seeks to give an independent watchdog the power to protect public servants who make those disclosures.

[Federal Accountability Act, April 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the accountability act, if passed, will be the toughest anti-corruption law in Canadian history. It will end the revolving door between ministers' offices and lobby firms. It will give the Auditor General the power to shine the light of day into every dark corner in her hunt for waste, theft and corruption. It will ban big money and corporate cash from political campaigns so that no longer will powerful interests buy favours during political campaigns. It will protect honest whistleblowers from bullying.

The latter point is a particular passion of mine because I represent an Ottawa area riding full of honest public servants who need protection should they ever step forward with information of corruption or wrongdoing. They need to know that their livelihood will be secured.

Our whistleblower protection, that which is provided for specifically in the accountability act, would do a number of things that the previous Liberal government failed to do in Bill C-11. For one, we intend to give full enforcement power to the office of the integrity commissioner. The integrity commissioner would be responsible for protecting public servants against bullying and reprisals. Bill C-2 would give the office of the integrity commissioner the authority to carry out that protection rather than simply the ability to make a recommendation.

For example, under the previous Liberal bill if a whistleblower were to experience bullying he or she would have to go to the employer originally to seek restoration and, if not, to the Labour Relations Board, a body that most public servants with whom I have spoken do not consider effectively independent.

How likely is it that a public servant will be comfortable taking that risk under those circumstances? Without the enforcement power, the integrity commissioner would be unable to impose consequences on those who bully whistleblowers. Instead, the bully, often the employer, could be required to impose discipline on himself or herself. We do not believe that is a likely prospect. We do not believe that if a department, a deputy head or an employer has bullied a whistleblower that they will turn around and discipline themselves for having carried out that infraction. As a result, there is no way we can fully trust the integrity of the process unless it is made independent through enforcement power in the integrity commissioner's office. In other words, the only way to truly protect the whistleblower is to guarantee independent legal protection from someone who works for Parliament, not from someone who works for the executive branch of government.

History has shown that these independent protections are essential. Let us look at the case of Allan Cutler, a great whistleblower who exposed the Liberal theft and corruption in the sponsorship scandal. He was declared surplus and lost his job. To this day his job has not been restored. Why? It is because he would have to go back to his old employer, the very employer who terminated him or declared him surplus. The process is too political and until it is severed out and made completely independent, people like Allan Cutler will never get full restoration.

The whistleblower laws contained in the accountability act would remove the political interference and give the power to an independent tribunal of judges comprised only when needed, giving them the power to restore the Allan Cutlers of the world. Anyone who believes in the independence of the judiciary must also believe in the independence of this process. It is comprised of an officer of Parliament at the top and a tribunal of acting federal court judges throughout the process.

The accountability act would give these protections not only to public servants but to all Canadians. All employees of crown corporations and all contractors will receive protection. Every private citizen whistleblower will have protection under federal statutory law against bullying.

It is rare throughout the world to see protections that go this far, but we have been willing to institute them in the accountability act because it is the right thing to do. The thousands of public servants who live and work in my riding tell me consistently that should they find themselves in the unfortunate situation of an Allan Cutler, they would be desperate to have these sorts of protections because it is their livelihoods that are on the line.

Too often we have seen these courageous whistleblowers destroyed, their lives and reputations and yes, their own financial security. They do not have the ability to hire an army of lawyers to defend them in courts, and that is why we are giving them the ability to do so through an independent tribunal under the auspices of an officer of Parliament. Throughout that process, whistleblowers will have legal advice furnished to them and they will have the ability to operate in a setting that is open and transparent.

We are removing the cover-up clauses that the Liberals had installed in the previous whistleblower protection law. Those cover-up clauses allowed cabinet to rip whistleblower protection out of the hands of employees at crown corporations, to cover up information related to scandal for five years, and prevent access to information requests from going there. We are removing those kinds of cover-up clauses because we believe that whistleblower protection is designed to expose corruption and restore accountability, not the reverse.

These protections for whistleblowers are long overdue. The government operations committee discussed whistleblower protection for two years. The Liberal government commenced the discussions on Bill C-11 almost two years ago, but still on election day the bill had not been given royal proclamation. In other words, Canada still does not have whistleblower protection.

I say whistleblowers have waited long enough. The time is now. We need not discuss the same old debates that we have gone over for years and years. The time has come for these measures, indeed all measures contained in the accountability act, to be promptly moved through committee, passed through this House, and sent to the Senate for quick ratification.

I believe any attempt to frustrate the passage of the accountability act will be met with ferocious opposition from everyday Canadian voters who demand these changes. I can assure members of the House that I, as a member of Parliament, will be both honest and vigilant in watching for any form of procedural subterfuge that Liberal senators and other Liberals might attempt to employ to block the passage of this important anti-corruption law.

More broadly, we are discussing the country that we wish to create. We wish to create a country that rewards people who work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules, and punish those who cheat, steal and break the law. That is the very definition of accountability: rewarding good and punishing bad. That is what we as Conservatives believe; that is what our agenda is all about.

It goes beyond one single act. Consider the Conservative fixation with lower taxes, and I use that word fixation proudly. Taxes are a penalty on success. Conservatives will cut taxes to reward success by letting people keep more of what they work so hard to earn. We will bring in tax credits for the cost of a student's textbooks to reward learning, tax credits for kids' sports to reward exercise and healthy living, tax credits for public transit to reward clean transportation, and so on.

Conversely, the government will enact tough penalties for criminal wrongdoing. Mandatory minimum prison sentences and an end to house arrest represent new forms of accountability for lawbreakers.

Let us take Canada's foreign policy. A nation predicated on the principles of accountability must reward great strides toward democracy by committing aid and troops in places like Afghanistan, but punish tyrants and terrorists such as Hamas with international denunciation and cuts to foreign aid. That is what accountability means beyond this piece of legislation.

By itself, the accountability act is the toughest anti-corruption law in Canadian history, but it is a theme by which the government, under the Prime Minister with his Conservative philosophy, will judge actions on policy issues ranging from fighting crime to foreign affairs, from fiscal policy to ethics.

I will now broaden my discussion of the accountability act. The act will open the windows to let in all that beautiful sunshine the NDP member has been talking about. He spoke of that sunshine as the greatest detergent to clean away the corruption, to hold to account the wrongdoer, to expose waste, and to rid ourselves of the wrongs that were done by the previous government. That is exactly what we have done.

We are extending access to information into a whole series of bodies of the government that were formerly excluded. Crown corporations, for example, will have new requirements of openness to the Canadian taxpayers. The Auditor General will have the ability to follow the money, to go into organizations that receive large sums of public money, and find out where those dollars are being spent.

Imagine if the Auditor General had been able to follow the money to the advertising firms and even the Liberal Party during the latest sponsorship scandal. Imagine if we had greater access to the books of the great foundations where Liberals have been stashing away billions of dollars for so many years. Imagine all the contractors that have benefited from the Liberal gun registry, which is now $1 billion over budget. Those types of government expenditures deserve to be subjected to the greatest public scrutiny, and that is exactly what the accountability act seeks to accomplish.

I want to take this moment to thank those who have worked so hard in putting the bill together. In particular, I would like to single out the public servants from the Justice Department and Treasury Board, the drafters who have worked so long and so hard to put together this sweeping legislation in such a short period of time. Their efforts are recognized not only by myself and the President of the Treasury Board but by the Prime Minister who understands the way they have toiled to make their country a better place.

I would like to thank the Prime Minister for having given me this opportunity and the President of the Treasury Board for having carried out his duties with such vigour and integrity.

With that, I throw open a challenge to all members of Parliament. The time for talk is done. We have arrived at a moment of action. We must move swiftly through the legislative process to secure the passage of this law by the House of Commons and refer it to the Senate by early June so that senators will have the ability to pass the law into statute by the beginning of July. This is an enormous task.

For example, the whistleblower protection law of the previous government took two years and never got completely enacted. Whistleblower protection is one of 13 parts of the accountability act and we expect to have it completely passed by summer in approximately three months. It is an extremely tight timeline. That is why there is no time for gamesmanship. We have no room for partisanship.

Those parties that have an institutional opposition to any form of accountability must be served notice here and now that we will make them pay a grave public price if they try to hold back the public will, and if they try to stop the passage of this accountability act. The time is now. The place is here. We have been vested with this responsibility and very little time in which to execute it. I call on all members of the House of Commons to rise not only in support of this accountability act but in favour of more accountable society, one predicated on the principles earlier enunciated here.