John Williams was first elected to the House of Commons on October 25th, 1993.  He was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet as the Treasury Board Critic for the Reform Party Caucus and appointed to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts.   Re-elected to the House of Commons in 1997, 2000, 2004 and 2006 as a member of the Conservative Party caucus, Mr. Williams was also elected Chairman of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts, a position he has held since 1997.  In the most recent session of Parliament, Mr. Williams also served as the vice-chair of the Sub-Committee on Committee Budgets.

John Williams is the author of The Waste Report, a periodic publication on government waste that is now a well known critique of lack of accountability and mismanagement in government.  Mr. Williams is also the Chair of the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC), an international organization focused on the development of good governance and the promotion of accountability and transparency amongst parliamentarians from around the world.  He is also the Chair of the Canadian chapter of GOPAC, Canadian Parliamentarians Against Corruption (CanPAC).

Mr. Williams is a member of the Liaison Committee of the House of Commons, and is also co-author of a report entitled “Measuring Quality of Life:  The Use of Societal Outcomes by Parliamentarians” (November 2001).  He is also a member of the Inter-American Dialogue.

Mr. Williams is a member of CCAF's Advisory Committee on Accountability and Audit.

Prior to being elected, Mr. Williams was a Certified General Accountant (CGA) who had his own private practice in the City of St. Albert.  In 1999, he was recognized by the Association and was named a Fellow of CGA-Canada.  In 2005, he was awarded the John Leslie Award by CGA-Canada, which is awarded to a CGA member who has achieved national recognition for exceptional service to business, the community, politics and the arts.

JOHN WILLIAMS, MP: UNDERSTANDING THE ORIGINS OF ACCOUNTABILITY

Leaving aside classical times, our democracy goes back all the way to 1215 when King John of England was forced to sign a document we now know as the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta said, in principle, “No, King John, you are not an autocratic monarch! If you want to do something around here, you ask us. You get our permission to raise the money if you want to go off and fight some war. You ask us for our money; you don't tell us you're going to take it.”

This was the first exercise of accountability in government, where the King couldn't do whatever he wanted, but needed permission.

Then, about a hundred year later, the peasants of England said, “If you want me to be on the front line fighting your war, you'd better ask me if I want to be there and put my life on the line for you!” That's a simplistic concept of the evolution of the House of Commons, but you get the idea. Again, the message to the monarch was, “You must ask us.” Accountability.

Several hundred years later, here we are today still floundering around trying to get accountability right. And maybe one day we will get it right. The basic concept, however, is still the same: You must ask us.

I often talk about what I call my hourglass theory, which is my attempt to explain how accountability works in a democracy. Typically we picture institutional structures as a pyramid, illustrating a standard organizational structure. The citizens are at the base of the pyramid. They are served by the bureaucracy, which is given direction by the Cabinet, which reports to the Prime Minister at the top of the pyramid.

But in my view this image is incomplete. It lacks the top half of the hourglass, an inverted triangle illustrating that the Cabinet and Prime Minister report to Parliament, and Parliament reports to the people. The people are at the top of the hourglass, demanding accountability from people like myself, the legislator, who demand accountability from the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, who then serve society through the public service.

A government should be accountable each and every day, and not just at election time. As a legislator, I'm the one who's accountable at election time. The government has to be accountable each and every day to the legislator and to Parliament.

Four responsibilities of legislators

Legislators have four simple, but fundamental responsibilities.

First, if the government wants to do something, it must come to Parliament and say, “May I do this? Can I introduce that new program? Can I provide this service to society at large?”.

Now as you know, Parliament is divided into two sides - the government side and the opposition side. And while the government side may be sympathetic to the government agenda, the opposition is, shall we say, usually less than sympathetic to the government agenda. Nonetheless, collectively we're parliamentarians, and the institution collectively has to say: “Yes you may,” or “No you can't.” After deliberation, after we bring to the table and to the debate the perspectives of the people we represent, we extend or withhold approval. This is democracy at work.

I represent a constituency in Alberta, part of the city of St. Albert and part of the city of Edmonton. I bring to Ottawa what I believe to be their perspective, and I vote according to what I believe they want, and the other 307 parliamentarians do the same. And then we have a considered and collective decision by the country saying to the government “Okay, you have the authority” or “No, you don't.”

This same process applies to the budget, the second area of a legislator's responsibility. If the government wants to raise taxes, it must come to Parliament and ask, “May we do this?”, and the exercise happens again. This also applies to the estimates process, with the line by line review of proposed budget spending - the legislator's third area of responsibility.

This is how Parliament evolved during the fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen hundreds so it would have control over the expenditures of the government. Unfortunately, today, if you blink you will miss how the House of Commons handles the federal government's spending of a hundred and eighty billion dollars a year. In twenty minutes, from start to finish, our job is done. Not a single question, not a debate. The rules are fixed. Parliament does not work effectively when it comes to the examination of the spending of the Government of Canada, despite the fact that this was one of the major reasons why Parliament evolved.

The fourth responsibility of legislators is that government reports to us. Remember that hourglass - Parliament is above the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. Our Auditor General in Ottawa, Sheila Fraser, does a great amount of research and analysis, and she reports to Parliament on what she finds within government. Then we legislators call in the Ministers, the Deputy Ministers and the civil servants and say, “What's going on over there? We want to know. You will answer our questions. You report to us.”

So that, in a nutshell, is the theory and practice of the role of Parliament in the accountability process. If we do our job well, then government is held accountable.

Keeping government honest

Let me make a confession: I drive too fast. I set my cruise control 10 kilometers over the speed limit all the time. Why? Because I can get away with it. I don't go 20, 30 or 40 kilometers over the speed limit, because I know then I would get stopped. And I would get a ticket, and my insurance would go up, and I would get demerit points, and I don't want that.

This tells me a few simple things. If I think I'm going to get away with something, I'll do it. If the government thinks it will get away with something, it will do it. But if I think I'm going to get caught, and I don't like the price, I won't do it.

That is the difference between accountability and no accountability. If you think you're going to get away with something, you do it. But if you think you're going to get caught, and the price is too high - the two things have to be there - you don't do it.

That is how Parliaments control corruption. Now look at the sponsorship scandal. Somebody thought they could get away with it. But they didn't. The government then said, “Better not do that again.” Accountability.

Parliament's role is to make sure they don't get away with it, and if we do our job right, we're like the RCMP officer on the highway who pulls you over and says, “Here's your ticket”. That is accountability. That is our role as parliamentarians, and as legislators.

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