Brent Rathgeber has taken another shot at revamping the bill that sparked his exit from the Conservative Party caucus.
The St. Albert-Edmonton MP introduced amendments to Bill C-461 during last Friday’s session in the House of Commons.
Rathgeber left the Tory party in June after they changed his proposed bill. Those changes included altering the level of public servant salary disclosure that could be released. Rathgeber had proposed $188,000 be the bar after which access to information requests could result in receiving specific salary and job description information. The amount was upped to $444,000, and now Rathgeber is seeking to amend the bill so the level will be switched to the same as an MP’s pay.
“So the amendments that I tabled last week and which were debated in the house on Friday would lower that back down to the sessional allowance made payable to a member of Parliament, which is $160,000 in change. So if you make less than a member of Parliament then the only thing that would be disclosed is the range of salary,” Rathgeber said.
His tabled amendments also would delete the sections of the bill regarding disclosure from the CBC. Rathgeber said the rider the government put on to protect journalist sources was problematic.
“I’m not opposed to protecting confidential sources but I am opposed to the mechanics that the government used by amending my bill to provide it,” Rathgeber said.
MPs from the NDP, Liberals and even a Tory MP, John Williamson from New Brunswick, spoke during debate in favour of the amendments brought forward by Rathgeber.
“Both opposition parties seem to be in favour, the government is opposed based on Dan Albas’ speech in the House on Friday. But some of the backbenchers are very much in favour of my amendments,” Rathgeber said. “If it’s a whipped vote I’m not confident that any of these amendments will carry. If it’s an unwhipped vote I’m confident they’ll all carry.”
Rathgeber suggested the governing Tories are opposed to the bill because they’re not comfortable disclosing how much they’re paying their top people, including bonuses.
“These bonuses are not insignificant. These bonuses can be six figures,” Rathgeber said. “That’s a lot of taxpayers’ money the government doesn’t want to disclose.”
Debate will continue for another hour in the report stage, probably in late January or early February, he said. If the amendments pass, there will have to be a vote on third reading.
So by mid-February, Rathgeber should know in what form the bill is heading to the Senate for their consideration. The Senate could change the bill, but the MP said he might “throw up the white flag at that point” instead of trying to persuade senators to consider his amendments if they’ve failed in the House of Commons.
Rathgeber said he suspects the government will oppose his amendments to the bill, though given the current Senate scandal he thinks they should let them pass.
“The government, I think, if they were smart they would reaffirm the principles of open and transparent government and they would allow this bill to pass and they would allow these amendments to go forward,” Rathgeber said.
