I can hear from you later on.
If I understand correctly, certain departments do a good job, while others could do better.
In recent years, I have done some research because I am very interested in public accounts. I learned that, 22 years ago, the U.S. government enacted the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 to address the challenges that federal departments faced in collecting certain debts. As in Canada, most people pay their debts, but others might have more trouble doing so. With this law, the U.S. government wanted to provide a stricter framework for debt recovery. The initiative paid off because it now collects about $40 billion in debt every year. The key to its success is its speed. Each department has six months to collect a debt on its own, and then it is handed over to the U.S. Treasury.
A few years ago, the Receiver General for Canada launched a pilot project. In your opinion, could we do more to recover debts earlier and thereby improve our results?
In closing, when I look at these figures as the MP for Gaspé, I see that a great deal of money is involved. Sometimes we lose perspective when we see huge sums such as $4 billion, or even $40 billion. But if we take a moment to think about it, we realize that $4 billion is 4,000 million dollars, a huge amount.
So I would like to know if we can do anything to establish a better process to limit debt write-offs as much as possible.