Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to start by thanking the member from Montreal for her well-reasoned comments. She made some excellent points.
Certainly, in this day and age, every party on Parliament Hill uses databases so members can manage the work of their constituency and Hill offices, and that's perfectly fine. Having access to such tools means we can serve people effectively. These systems help us track who has contacted us and why, whether it's the first or fifth time we've been in contact, and if the issues are connected. It's perfectly normal.
It's also perfectly normal for every party to use a database for partisan purposes, such as to remember who they have interacted with and in relation to what.
However, there can be no mixing of the data from the two systems. The databases must not communicate with one another. They are required to operate as stand-alone systems—hence, the firewall, which as everyone knows, works without a hitch.
I saw what the NDP member from northern Ontario had to say on the subject. He agreed, saying his party makes sure the two databases operate independently of one another. Our party does pretty much the exact same thing.
This is an issue I'm quite familiar with. In a past life, long before I became a member of Parliament, I was the national director of the Liberal Party of Canada. I was the one who did the research and signed the contract with NGP VAN. I'm very proud of our work on that file. We really brought the Liberal Party into the modern age. Prior to that, all we had were paper-based lists; it was a bit makeshift. We made a decision to enter the 21st century by adopting a highly flexible IT system. Not only does it offer a considerable degree of flexibility, but it also has an excellent track record for ensuring a separation between certain data.
It would be preposterous to have a system without a firewall. If that were the case, the company's reputation would be ruined and no one would do business with it. Use of the system isn't limited to Canada; it's a well-honed system that has long been used in the United States. Personally, I think it's the best system out there, but I imagine the Conservatives would say their system is better than ours.
Mr. Barrett, you mentioned CivicTrack or Softchoice.