Hansard Excerpts-Access to Information- starts at 10:10am-Government transparency?Read the whole thing from the link

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Mr. Tom Lukiwski (Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, CPC)

........If we are to take the justice minister at his word and he does introduce new legislation to amend the Access to Information Act, we will need Mr. Reid to assist in the transition. This is a 22-year-old act that is in dire need of changes. It is paramount that we update the act.

We on the access to information committee recognize that. When I say “we”, I mean all opposition members on the committee voted in favour of extending the appointment of Mr. Reid for another year. The only members of the committee who opposed the motion to extend Mr. Reid's appointment were the members of the Liberal Party of Canada.

It is fascinating to me, when a former Liberal cabinet minister, someone who served for six consecutive elections and for close to 20 years in this place with great distinction, that members of his own party would be the only ones on the access to information committee to oppose his extension for one year.

We all have to ask ourselves why the Liberal members of the committee oppose such an extension. It cannot be because of his qualifications. He has served this Parliament well for seven years. It cannot be because of lack of experience. He probably has more experience as a parliamentary officer than anyone else. In addition, he has extensive experience in the field of access to information. His lack of experience just does not hold true. It has to be something else.

The only thing I can think of is that Mr. Reid has categorically stated that what he would like to see in new access to information legislation would be the increased level of information that would be available to all Canadians upon request.

Mr. Reid has stated that if his vision of a new act comes into being, we could probably safely say that incidents, such as the sponsorship scandal, would not have happened in the first place. Individuals, whether they be members of this place, members of the media or individual Canadians, would have the ability to receive information from government departments that would have triggered the fact that the sponsorship scandal was in full bloom.

However the Liberal members of the committee have stated that they do not want to see Mr. Reid's term extended. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that the Liberals do not want more accountability and transparency. They do not want Canadians, members of the media or parliamentarians to have the ability to find out what they have been doing behind closed doors. I have to say that if that is the reason it is absolutely shameful.

We have a situation in the country right now where Canadians have been outraged, with good reason, at what they have found out during the Gomery commission about the sponsorship scandal. We should all be working on behalf of Canadians to put into place processes and procedures that prevent that type of action from ever occurring again.

With the sponsorship scandal we have seen the literal theft of taxpayer money that was ultimately put back into a political party for clearly political purposes. No Canadian and no parliamentarian should stand for that. We should, as a body of parliamentarians, come together and state what can we do to ensure this never takes place.

In fact, as we all know and every Canadian knows, Justice Gomery has been charged with the responsibility of trying to get to the bottom of the sponsorship scandal and then recommending processes that will prevent that type of action from ever happening again.

.... Every member of this House from time to time have stated that they believe in what Justice Gomery is doing and agree with his mandate. Therefore one has to wonder why, when we have an individual like John Reid, the current Information Commissioner, who wishes to put in processes to strengthen the recommendations that we will be hearing from Justice Gomery to prevent things like the sponsorship scandal from ever happening again, members of the Liberal Party of Canada on the committee are opposed to extending his appointment.

How can the government members stand in the House day after day and say they believe in accountability, transparency and openness? They agree, or at least they say they agree, with the mandate of Justice Gomery when in practice they do exactly the opposite. I think that is absolutely shameful. When we say one thing, we have to act as if we mean what we say. In other words, we can talk the talk but we have to walk the walk. This government does nothing like that. I think it is absolutely shameful.

Again, I urge any member on the Liberal side to stand in the House or even at committee and make one argument for why Mr. Reid's extension should not take place. The Liberals have failed to do that. I encourage all members today to put forward that argument. I encourage them to tell me whether it was his lack of experience that prevented them from endorsing Mr. Reid's extension. Was it the fact that he did not have knowledge of the department? Of course not.

Once again, this is a man whose actions in the mid-1970s resulted in the first Access to Information Act being presented in the House in 1983 and who, upon his appointment as Information Commissioner seven years ago, has done nothing but perform his duties admirably, with distinction and, to his credit, in a non-partisan, impartial manner. That is why those Liberal members do not want to see him reappointed.

An hon. member: They want a partisan hack.

Mr. Tom Lukiwski: They want a Liberal lapdog in that position.


.........Mr. Jeff Watson (Essex, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for bringing forward this motion, and I thank all opposition colleagues on the committee for such a critical motion. I find it ironic that with a government that has brought forward a whistleblower protection act as one of the earliest pieces of legislation in this minority Parliament, it is the Conservative Party that is standing here today protecting and advancing a tough defender of access to information, a true whistleblower on the misdeeds and the shroud of secrecy that surround this Liberal government.

Access to information is such a vital part of opposition parliamentarians being able to do their job. Perhaps that government over there does not want a strong opposition. It just wants us to roll over and play dead, but no, we need to be able to do our job well. Canadians expect us to hold this government to account. That is why they elected us as opposition members of Parliament.

As a kid, I was always warned whatever one does secret is ultimately going to come to light. That is why it is important to have a motion like this coming forward. What this government has done in secret for 12 years needs to come to light. It is not just the sponsorship scandal that I am talking about. I am sure there are all kinds of scandals waiting to be uncovered. That is why the Liberals do not support the extension for this Information Commissioner.

Ultimately what really sticks with me is that this current Prime Minister was supposed to be a champion of transparency and openness. That is what he kept telling people on his nine year climb to power as he stepped over Liberal body after Liberal body to become the Prime Minister.

My question is simple. I look to my colleague. Why is this Liberal government so afraid of extending the term of this tough Information Commissioner for even one year? Does it not want a tough whistleblower constructively criticizing its lust for secrecy and its tendency for cover-up?
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Mr. Tom Lukiwski: Mr. Speaker, in answer to my hon. colleague's question, I referred in my opening comments to the fact that the only conclusion I can draw as to why the Liberals do not want to see the extension of Mr. Reid is that there is more corruption and they are trying to cover it up.

They do not want someone who knows the political process, who knows the system and who knows cabinet. They do not want someone like that in this role, because, let us face it, if these new tough rules get implemented then he would be able to uncover the corruption that undoubtedly lies just below the surface with that government.

The Liberals have had 12 years of corruption and have the audacity to stand in this House and say that while they agree that Mr. Reid has served his position well and with distinction, they just do not think it is really within the rules to extend his contract for one more year.

I do not know how they believe that Canadians will swallow this line. All the Liberals are trying to do is bring someone in who does not have the knowledge, the experience and the political background to uncover the dirt and the corruption. They want someone that they can use as a lapdog. They do not want to get to the truth. They do not want to uncover their own corruption. That is why they are opposing the extension for Mr. Reid.

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Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the Liberals do not want to reappoint Mr. Reid because they do not like what he advocates, but we know that indicative of any totalitarian regime is the control of information. It is central to the functioning of any dictatorship.

Previously, I talked to the Auditor General about this. She said that there are limits to laws and rules and policy directives, but they just get ignored. What is needed in addition is a culture of transparency.

I want the member to talk about what this current move by the government reveals about its character. We see its love of secrecy and its record of undermining the access to information law. We have seen its failure to expand resources to actually implement the law. The central element, which is basic to all of democracy, is openness and transparency, public access and the public's right to know.

Can he explain in plain terms what the Liberal move means to the average voter? Why should the average voter care about us arguing about access to information?
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Mr. Tom Lukiwski: Mr. Speaker, in plain terms, why Canadians should be concerned is that the shroud of secrecy the government has perpetrated on the Canadian public for the last 12 years is reprehensible.

The sponsorship scandal never would have been uncovered had it not been for the Auditor General. Liberals do not want more transparency and more openness in government. If there were, then all the facts of every Liberal theft and corruption would come to the public's eye. They do not want more openness in government because they are afraid of what the political ramifications would be to that party if the public were able to find out how they have served themselves rather than than Canadians for the last 12 years.

Liberals do not want someone who will be tough. They do not want somebody who will ensure that Canadians have access to all information on what they consider to be their own government purview..........

Mr. Pierre Poilievre (Nepean—Carleton, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the real reason John Reid is not being renewed is because he has a record of exposing Liberal tricks, balderdash and eventually Liberal corruption.

I remember when he came before the government operations committee and exposed the numerous loopholes which the government tried to hide in its so-called whistleblower protection act. Those loopholes, had they been in place during the time the Liberal Party was stealing Canadian tax dollars through the sponsorship scandal, would have covered up the scandal for as many as 20 years. They were exposed by one man, by John Reid.

I remember the Liberal members who were in the committee room at that time. They looked him in the eye with great anger and disappointment. They realized that he was not going to be a lapdog to them. I see some of those members and the same sort of contempt that they have on their faces today is how they looked at John Reid that day. I knew they were coming for John Reid after that moment.

I knew they were furious that he was doing his job as Information Commissioner and that he was exposing Liberal tricks and corruption. Were it not for John Reid's testimony that day, those Liberal tricks would never have been exposed and that whistleblower bill would have become a full instrument to cover up Liberal corruption. That is the real reason the government is trying to assassinate an officer of the House.

Why will the member not stand up in the House of Commons and admit that is what he and his party are trying to do?

Mr. Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, NDP): Mr. Speaker, as difficult as it is to follow a gifted orator and journeyman member of Parliament like the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, I would like to begin by complimenting my colleagues on the opposition benches for giving us the opportunity, on a day for their opposition day motion, to debate not one but two pressing issues. Contrary to what my colleague from Glengarry—Prescott—Russell says about not using opposition days well, in actual fact they have turned one issue into two and have given Canadians the opportunity in the twilight days of this Parliament to debate the issue that I feel is paramount, and that is access to information.

Let me begin by saying that freedom of information is the oxygen that democracy breathes. There is no greater champion in our country on the issue of freedom of information than our outgoing Information Commissioner, the hon. John Reid, who has valiantly tried in the last seven years to break down the barriers to open government and true access to information.

I would be remiss not to recognize and pay tribute as well to another long-standing champion on this issue who is no longer with us, John Bryden, a former member of Parliament. In his final days as an MP he was with the Conservative Party. He dedicated his entire career toward trying to open up Canadian government to freedom of information so citizens could access the inner workings of the governments that represent them.

Like many Canadians, I look to the senior statesman in Canadian journalism in many ways, Hugh Winsor, for inspiration and comment. He has an article in today's Globe and Mail and the headline reads, “A major government irritant is bowing out”. That sums it up. This is why John Reid is leaving us. He has been a major irritant to the Government of Canada because he has been forthright and honest about his dogged pursuit of changing the access to information rules.

I will not read what Mr. Winsor has to say but I recommend strongly that other people have a serious look at this. He makes the point quite clearly about what happened to Mr. Reid...........
There were predictable turning points in Mr. Reid's career. One of them, as my colleague from the Conservatives pointed out, was his presentation to the government operations committee. It was not viewed very favourably when he pointed out glaring loopholes that had been built in to what the government tried to call whistleblowing legislation. It was really more like an act to protect ministers from whistleblowers, which is what Mr. Reid exposed, and that was not viewed too favourably.

I think the thing that was really the turning point in Mr. Reid's career, and my colleagues may agree, was he backed an access request to see former Prime Minister Chrétien's daily agendas. They may have shown how much time he was spending at the Royal Ottawa golf club. He also backed an access request, which he deemed to be appropriate, calling for the daily briefings for Art Eggleton when he was the minister of national defence.

The Privy Council Office attempted to block Mr. Reid's scope by filing 25 applications in the Federal Court for judicial review of his rulings. In other words, Mr. Reid saw it to be absolutely fitting and appropriate that we should have public access to the former prime minister's daily itineraries and Mr. Eggleton's briefing notices.

The PCO clammed up in this culture of secrecy that dominates Ottawa today. It went to ground, threw up the barriers and started filing what we would call in the private sector slap suits. In other words, it filed 25 court appeals for judicial review to silence this issue. It lost all of them. Mr. Reid was found to be absolutely accurate. His interpretation of the access to information laws was correct, and the government should release this information. To this day it has refused. We have not seen those agendas. This is a graphic illustration of what is wrong with the freedom of information laws in our country.

The federal government, however, is slammed shut with access denied. We do not have the right to know, no matter what it says on paper. Notwithstanding the fact that we have an officer of Parliament charged with the enforcement of the Access to Information Act, we cannot get that information. It is like giving people directions and then telling them that they cannot get there from here. Well we cannot get the information that we deserve as Canadian taxpayers in this particular regime.

Mr. John Reid, Canada's outgoing Information Commissioner, made a very poignant statement recently when he said:

In one way or another, all the checks and balances designed to limit abuses of government power are dependent upon there being access by outsiders to governments’ insider information.

A public service which holds tight to a culture of secrecy is a public service ripe for abuse.

We have graphic evidence of that before us daily in the House of Commons. We could spend all of our time chasing what the government likes to call “rogue bureaucrats”, or trying to plug the random ad hoc examples of abuse when we are lucky enough to stumble across them, or we could go to the root of the problem and wipe the slate clean. We could shine the disinfectant of sunlight on this culture of corruption that exists. If it is a powerful disinfectant, we could expose this and let the free democracy in which we live do its job to cleanse corruption from our system. .......

Mr. Pierre Poilievre (Nepean—Carleton, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I know the member to be an advocate of accountability around this place. He has been a breath of fresh air in the House of Commons and in committees.

We were sitting in the same committee meeting when John Reid testified. I remember his testimony to be one of the most brilliant interventions I have witnessed in my short time here. I have not been here long, but I recall that intervention. It was very carefully laid out. He explained how the current whistleblower law that the Liberals have introduced would actually do more to cover up corruption than it would to expose it. He laid out his case in meticulous and legalistic detail.

I recall how angry the Liberal members on that committee were that day. They were absolutely furious that someone would expose these loopholes in their bill. I remember at that very moment thinking to myself that the Liberals were going to go for his job. I knew it at that moment. His willingness to be independent and outspoken in defence of freedom of information and in defence of accountability would mean he would pay a very serious price. We are now seeing those predictions come true.

I ask this question with a degree of sadness. I fundamentally believe that the government succeeds in corrupting the process of freedom of information. It will put a blanket over all of the corruption that goes on in government and prevent the light of day from ever shining on it. All of that Liberal fraud, Liberal corruption and Liberal bribery that we have learned about through the sponsorship scandal and the Gomery commission could be suppressed. It all came out because of access to information in the first place.

If the Liberal government succeeds in covering it over by corrupting the freedom of information process, scandals like the sponsorship affair will never reach the public eye. Had the Liberals succeeded in covering up the information process, we would never have known that ad scam had occurred. It might still be ongoing today.

I wonder if the hon. member is as concerned as I am at the deep-seated implications that may genuinely flow from the government's attempt to corrupt the freedom of information process. Is he as concerned as I am that this could lead to greater Liberal theft, greater Liberal fraud, and even greater Liberal bribery? Does he share those concerns?

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Mr. Pat Martin: Mr. Speaker, my colleague too has rapidly earned a reputation as being a champion of the issue of accountability and transparency. I look to him for many years of exposing on behalf of Canadians everything that is wrong about this place.

To answer his question briefly, I can only restate that one cannot overstate what a central place freedom of information holds in our society. The Supreme Court of Canada calls access to information quasi-constitutional. It is one of those fundamental rights and freedoms that a free western society enjoys. We apparently do not appreciate what we have because we have let it go lax. We have let it slide to the point where one can no longer honestly say that Canadians enjoy the right to know and the right to access to information, because the evidence would speak otherwise.

Mr. Mario Laframboise (Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, BQ)
.... Believe it or not, the information commissioner currently has a backlog of over 2,000 requests. Work is a year and a half behind. All the Liberals can find to do is change the commissioner. Obviously, communications would be simpler if the government said the commissioner was not doing the work, which explained why so many files were late. The officials at the Privy Council told us in committee that perhaps better organization within the office of the information commissioner would result in a saving. In the end, it is quite simple. Too many requests have been made to the office of the information commissioner because of corruption among the Liberals.

They also say they are transparent and have a limited budget. The commissioner was given an 18-month supplemental budget. However, the requests continue to flow in at a rate 25% to 30% higher than previous years. From year to year, since 2002-2003, there has been a 25% increase in requests for access to information. Individuals, some MPs and journalists are making the requests. Many individuals are requesting documents. They want to know about the things they hear coming out of some government departments.

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They want to have the documents. There is a greater demand not because of the governance of the Canadian government, but simply because of the Liberal corruption. We were told flat out that there is no end in sight to the requests. Individuals feel their opinions on politicians are under attack. They no longer trust them. They want to have certain documents in their own possession and are requesting certain information. They are right to do so.

The only way for us, the politicians, to all come out of this as winners, is for citizens to regain their trust in government, ask questions and request information. The commissioner should have a bigger budget for this.

But no, the governing Liberal Party has decided there is no advantage in having individuals, journalists or even MPs know more. The Liberals are limiting the work of the commissioner. They are not giving him the necessary budget. They know the needs are increasing, but they claim the commissioner might not be doing his job properly, that he is mismanaging his commission and that he should reorganize it.

So the decision is made not to renew his mandate and to instead appoint someone else, in hopes that the new commissioner will do better. That is insulting to the intelligence of the members of this House. Someone new, who does not know the ropes, is going to come along and fix everything right away. The same thing will happen as with Privacy Commissioner Stoddart. She has been trying for two years to get the privacy commissioner's office back on its feet after the mammoth waste by Mr. Radwanski. She has not yet managed to do so. The restructuring has been going on for two years.

So if we change the commissioner, the processing of requests will slow down even more. This may suit the Liberal Party of Canada, which wants to slow them down at least until the next election is over. Then if they do not like the outcome, and are still in a minority in this House, they will want to slow things down......

The Gomery commission, in the wake of the sponsorship scandal, is one such example. The gun registry scandal is another, which gobbled up vast sums of money. Some people do not believe it but the initial cost of the gun registry was set at $2 million, although it has cost $2 billion. The problem is that the Liberal Party has not suffered too much as a result since people refuse to believe it could say that the registry would cost $2 million and have it end up costing $2 billion. Liberal or not, Canadians and Quebeckers do not understand this. They all believe that this is not possible. But it is possible, here, in Canada. The Liberals said it would cost $2 million, but it has cost $2 billion. That is the reality.

More and more people are realizing this, asking questions and demanding answers from the Information Commissioner. This figure is so high that some people cannot believe it. Clearly, the Liberal Party has benefited. This took place in 2003, 2004 and 2005 in Canada. It has completely lost control of the program, which will cost a fortune. Supplementary estimates for this registry have been tabled every fall for the past four years, and next fall will be no different.