Thank you. This doesn't need a long, drawn-out discussion, because all of us, regardless of our political stripe, recognize the seriousness of what happened at HRSDC. It was not just one breach but two breaches of personal data.
Having come through our committee study on the implications of losing personal data, our committee is probably in a better position than any other committee to understand the implications of losing financial and personal information on 583,000 Canadians, which is actually one in 60. We need to look at this because of the failures to protect the public interests, which happened here when it was realized that the data was missing in November and no steps were taken at that time to contact citizens whose data could have been breached.
There was a two-month lag. If this had been in the hands of hackers or fraudsters, Canadian citizens from across the country would have been subjected to unimaginable fraud. There were two months during which nothing was done. The citizens I have spoken to—and I'm sure that each of us has had citizens in our ridings calling us—are very concerned.