Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, Mr. Speaker and Madam Clerk.
I know that at the Board of Internal Economy, you share the secrets of the powers that be, but have there been any discussions on MPs' budgets regarding the problems we are currently experiencing with respect to passports? To be perfectly honest, I consider the current situation to be unacceptable. Passport Canada is now opening a passport office in Edmundston, New Brunswick. People can go there and staff will be on site to help them determine whether the information filled out on the passport application is correct, to ensure there are no mistakes, and so on. In our ridings, we have to do that ourselves in our own offices. Right now, my office is completely snowed under with passport applications. One employee spends her entire day dealing with passports, and I am not the only one to be in that position. I was talking to Tony Martin, the member for Sault Ste. Marie. It's the same thing for him. When you talk to MPs, you discover that most of our employees are doing the work of the Government of Canada, because there are not enough passport offices in the regions. Now it's the MPs' offices that are doing that work. I think that you should be looking at whether we are going to have to do the government's work and supply us with the necessary staff in order to do that. While we carry out that work, other things are being neglected in our offices.
I have been forced to ask one of my employees to deal only with passports. When checking them, we ensure that the application has been completed correctly and that there are no documents missing. Also, if a passport does not arrive on time, people come to our offices, because they want to know when they are going to receive it. The Passport Canada office has even cut its phone lines: you can't even talk to them anymore, because they no longer answer the telephone. They have even changed their telephone number and you can't call them. It's an absolute mess. That is the way it is now, in 2007, and it will be even worse in 2008, because people will want to drive into the United States. We are not even seeing the tip of the iceberg, and we are the ones doing the work for Passport Canada. I wanted to mention that to you, Mr. Speaker, so that when you are in discussions with the others, you can give some thought to this problem that members of Parliament have been telling you about. Something should be done.
As regards staff, I would like to get some clarification. I have been talking with restaurant employees. They tell me that even though they have been working here for 15 years, when someone is laid off, they cannot move into the jobs of new cafeteria employees. Even though they have 15 years of seniority, a young person who has just been hired stays, and they have to leave. There are clearly some staff relations issues there, and this is something that should be looked at.
I don't like to see Parliament turn a blind eye to the problems that are out there. It is quite clear that we are having trouble supporting health and safety. This is an area where we still cannot really do much. People do whatever they like. We have employees, and yet we are not capable of giving them 700 hours of work. I think we may even face this problem earlier than we thought. If there were to be a snap election, that would also have an impact.
Let's take the example of the pages. If an election were to be called, they would be paid until the spring, right?