OTTAWA — The House of Commons unanimously accepted an amended accountability act Friday with some 90 changes.

The Conservative government's showpiece legislation passed through the House without a recorded vote Friday and is now set to get royal assent and pass into law early next week.

The bill received all-party support.

Treasury Board President John Baird did not dispute that the bill is improved as a result of the Senate examination, which involved dozens of witnesses commenting over weeks of hearings this autumn.

The "one disappointment,'' Baird said of the amended legislation, is that it no longer includes a move to a single ethics officer for both the Commons and the upper chamber.

Senators strongly objected to that provision because the two houses are supposed to be independent of one another in Canada's parliamentary system.

Apart from that, Baird said outside the Commons, "this bill is a heck of a lot stronger than it was when we introduced it on April 11. If anything, it's tougher -- so we're proud of that.''

New Democrat MP Pat Martin, one of the staunchest supporters of the government bill, called it an "accomplishment we can be quite proud of.''

"We achieved significant improvements on things like whistleblower protection, eliminating patronage appointments and tying a cowbell around lobbyists' necks,'' Martin said in a release.

Promises to bring in tough new rules on ethics and accountability formed the foundation of the Conservative election platform in the last election.

In the wake of the sponsorship scandal under the previous Liberal administration, all parties made pledges to clean up government.

The resulting legislation, drafted in a rush after the Tories came to power with a minority on Jan. 23, easily passed through the Commons last spring but bogged down this fall as the Liberal-dominated Senate went over the huge bill in detail.

The Senate wound up proposing about 150 amendments, 90 of which were eventually accepted.

Liberal MP Stephen Owen said the bill still contains what he called serious flaws that need to corrected should the Liberals return to power.

Most reforms to the access to information law, promised by the Tories during the election, were hived off from the bill and sent to committee for further study.

Nonetheless, said the MP, Liberals felt "this wasn't the time to slow (the bill's passage) down for that.''