Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As I've said before, I hesitate to make this committee or other committees into courtrooms. Mr. Hill is absolutely right; I think there'll never be any end to this. Was it done purposely? Was it not done purposely? Was it done almost purposely, or maybe a little purposely? I mean, there is no end to this.
However, Mr. Hill is absolutely right when we're talking of documents. If we are really serious about clamping down on this.... I don't want to show lack of respect, but we are about a thousand years behind the times here in the House of Commons as far as handling documents in a secure way is concerned. There are all kinds of electronic ways of marking documents, of identifying documents. There are all kinds of different types of papers that can be used. However, it involves time--by this I mean staff time--and it involves money, because it's more expensive and we'd have to do it the right way. But if that were one of the recommendations, I'd have no problem at all voting in favour of that, because I come from the claims investigations part of the insurance industry, and there are ways that have existed for years--and in recent years I am sure there have been huge improvements--of tracking down missing documents.
As it now is here on the Hill, we make photocopies of documents. We probably always make a couple of extra copies in case the photocopier stops in the middle of the job, then we're stuck. We're supposedly recycling enough paper on the Hill to enable us to build another building on my side of the river, and that would be nice.
Seriously, I think we can take means, we can take advice, we can take ways of making sure that documents.... Of course, whether documents are protected, whether you have disclaimers on them, whether you have markings on them, any document can be given to somebody. There is no doubt about that. But it could be one heck of a deterrent if people knew these documents were traceable.
So I have to agree with Mr. Hill that it is a problem, but we can probably solve it by having consultants or experts tell us how we could do it through a new way of handling documents or using different papers.
Thank you.