Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I've been listening to everyone for about three hours. We are dealing with an issue that is worth taking the time to discuss, since it has existed for years. It is a fundamental problem.
I will wait until I know my colleagues are listening, because it's for them that I'm speaking right now. I would like us to be able to have a discussion, because hopefully that might lead to a solution.
When I was first elected in 2006, the Board of Internal Economy and House of Commons services did not provide software to help us manage our constituents' case files in our riding offices. This is a fundamental problem. We still don't have those services today, 15 years later, and that's probably at the root of the problem we're facing now. Firms have designed software at the request of MPs from all parties. Keeping a living register is a real problem when we work with 90,000 citizens in our riding. At first, for a few years, we can keep paper records, but doing research becomes a very tedious job. People often come back to see us, and it is easier to provide adequate services to our constituents when we have software designed for this kind of case management.
It is still difficult to unravel all of this and understand how the same firm can provide a political party with both non-partisan software, as Mrs. Shanahan told us, and software used for partisan purposes. There was much emphasis on the fact that there were firewalls to keep the two databases completely separate. Frankly, I hope so, because we really do owe it to ourselves to keep a wall around the information we collect from our constituents for the purpose of providing them services. Virtually all of that data is useless for a party's partisan activities. Essentially, the information that parties want for their partisan activities are phone numbers they can't find on Canada 411 and email addresses. As for the addresses, Elections Canada gives them to us. The parties are always hunting for email addresses and cellphone numbers. It's a race to see who can get more of them. There's no hiding it here. The key to getting in touch with our constituents is to visit them or call them. The problem is that fewer and fewer Canadians have land lines. Therefore, we all have the same problem. We all want to have their cellphone numbers to get in touch with them. There's nothing secret about this.
However, there is an American company in the picture. Why? There may be an underlying reason no one knows about. I will give you a clue: In Canada there is no phone book listing cellphone numbers, but there is one in the United States that covers all of North America. I'm not sure whether you can connect the dots. It is illegal to have Canadians' cellphone numbers, but the Americans can access the cellphone numbers of all Canadians. That's very odd.
Perhaps someday we can try to find out why we are entitled to have residential phone numbers, but not cellphone numbers. Only 20% of Canadians have solely a land line. Everyone is giving up their land lines for cellphones. One day we won't even be able to do our job as politicians during an election campaign.
We have to stop burying our heads in the sand like ostriches. Right now, in Canada, we have a problem with cellphones. We are trying to find a solution by all legal means possible. There is actually a legal way: If the person wants to provide their cellphone number, we will take it. If there is consent, it's legal. However, 90% of Canadians do not want to give their cellphone number to a political party, so we're not going to get those numbers, unless we engage in barely legal schemes that are costly for the parties.
It is currently illegal for a political party to have a database listing the cellphone numbers of all Canadians, regardless of which party we're talking about.
There is a witch hunt going on and everyone is jumping in on it, when we all have the same problem: We are no longer able to contact our constituents. It's all well and good to go door to door, but if people don't open their doors or don't want to give us their cellphone numbers, we will not be able to call them, since they no longer have residential phone lines.
This is a bit less of a problem in rural areas. In cities, however, the situation is worse. There is a huge number of people who no longer have residential phone lines. You all have cities in your ridings. Do you know how many of your constituents have cellphones? Between 90% and 95% of citizens have cellphones, while 20% have a residential phone line.
Numbers for residential land lines are available on Canada 411, as are Canadians' names and addresses, so we can obtain them legally.
That brings us back to the idea of software that can be used for partisan purposes. This software should be provided by the Board of Internal Economy as part of the services offered to members of Parliament, and it should be the same for all MPs, regardless of party. That would be the only way we could guarantee independence between a party and its MPs. If members had software provided by the House to manage their constituents' case files, there would certainly be a firewall effective enough to protect the data in the software. If a party asked a company to design a software package to help its MPs manage their constituents' case files, it would surely be tempted to collect, at the same time, the cellphone numbers and email addresses of those people. As for the rest of the information, the parties don't need it or want it. Those are the facts.
We can throw mud at each other all we want. I have grandchildren, and if I help them put on their boots and there is a puddle, they will go play in the water and end up getting all dirty. We are doing exactly what children do when they play in a mud puddle. We will all play in the same puddle and end up getting soiled up to our necks. In the end, we will not be any further ahead or better able to do our jobs. We won't look all that smart to Canadians.
I have some doubts about your proposal to take this directly to the Board of Internal Economy, simply because it will die there. We are not going to fix the problem, we will only delay fixing it, should there be an election. One way or another, there will be an election in two years, let's face it. However, the problem still won't be resolved in two years or in the following four years.
Let's then take the time to talk about it at today's committee meeting. Several members have said that if we want to have software, we need firewalls. I agree with that. From an ethical standpoint, if we want to protect members of Parliament, we need firewalls. However, no software is going to be airtight if it's run by one party, no matter which party. If the five parties have five different software packages, we will be no further ahead.
In my view, if we were to make a recommendation, it would be to conduct a study on this kind of software package and ask that the House provide one to members of Parliament so they could manage their constituents' case records. As for partisan activities, the parties will take care of that themselves. The parties' partisan activities affect us to some extent, but they are not necessarily our responsibility as members of Parliament.
However, the confidentiality of the information contained in the software to manage constituents' cases is certainly our responsibility. We are acting on their behalf. Every time a citizen allows an MP to work on their case and do research on their behalf, regardless of the department involved, they are giving their consent, their proxy, to the member of Parliament, not the party.
This is why it is often said that, when an MP loses an election, the constituents' case files are all cleared. That's because the proxy was not given to the new MP, after the election. It was given to the sitting MP. The proxy is in the sitting member's name, and because of this, they can be sued at any time. If a constituent is not happy with something that happened and there is a leak of information, that is the MP's responsibility.
That's why each and everyone of us here should be careful. We have duties towards our constituents. We have duties and responsibilities under the law.
We therefore won't find a solution by passing the buck, as we are doing now.
Unfortunately, in 15 years, perhaps the House has not provided us with all the tools we need. That said, much progress has been made on the IT front. In 2006, everything was done on paper. We were just starting to use more IT tools. Now, the House provides us with a lot of IT services, but we never had a software package for managing our constituents' case files. It is hard for the House to create one. It's really complicated. It is easy enough for the House to do administrative management, because that's what they do, but managing constituents' case files is a different story. These systems are developed in MPs' offices. Some members have been lucky enough to work with the same staffers for 10 or 15 years, so they are aware of all the cases and all the situations that may arise.
I'll give you some examples. Simply removing the names of people who have died from the constituent list is quite a task. There are ways to do it faster now, but I used to have a staffer who worked 12 hours a week just to do that. We then found a way to do it in 15 minutes, thanks to computers. Managing the Christmas card program used to take two months in 2006, whereas today we can do it in about two hours.
Good software programs exist today to do this kind of work. The tools have improved over time. The House of Commons is not the one who designed these software programs. It was independent firms at the request of some MPs who wanted to save their employees time. When someone spends two months of their time at work on Christmas cards and figuring out who to send them to, it is hard on morale. Sometimes people will choose to leave their job the next year rather than having to do all that work again. There is no denying that it is not an interesting task.
To manage our employees in the long term, we need to give them tools to make their work enjoyable. It is our responsibility if we want to keep good employees for a long time. When we have good employees, we can provide better services to our constituents. If a member has high employee turnover at their office and changes employees every year, then they need to keep starting over. I am thinking about training staff. It takes one to two years to properly train a person who will be dedicated to their work, who will be familiar with all the programs and who will be aware of situations. The work gets done much more quickly when the person is familiar with the tasks they need to do and they can then better help people. An employee can resolve up to 90% of cases in one day when they are not too complicated. More complicated cases take more time. It gets easier with experience.
To keep good employees, we need to give them tools. In that regard, we can all work together to find solutions or we can be partisan and play political games to see who can undermine each other the most until the next election. Essentially, I am an MP to help the people in my riding. To help them and give them good service, I need to provide my employees with tools, tools of our own. I am happy to tell you about them, but at a certain point it comes down to experience.
The important issue here is maintaining corporate memory—
