Madam Speaker, I get the member's point, but the reality is that some facets of government need to be maintained for democracy's sake, and this is one of those. The institution that gathers the data, that interprets the data, that delivers the data to the House of Commons, to Canadians, to the government, needs to be seen as completely separate from that government. Certainly this is my point of view.
The question was about the benefits of bringing those services together, IT services across the board. What the member has heard in my speech is this. Other governments with very similar democracies to our own, in fact ours is based on one of them, did not proceed for this specific reason. We need to maintain the objectivity. We need to maintain the separation between church and state, between those who gather the data and those who use the data.
That message needs to be heard by the Government of Canada. This is not a situation where it is just about savings. The reality is that data, if it is done properly, can provide far more savings in the end than just this shared service.