Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the Liberals for letting me have their spot.
I want to focus on three quick areas. One is time. I appreciate that the minister is announcing today, I think, some changes, and there is great optimism about moving forward. But in the notes prepared for us by our analysts, it says:
The RCMP website states that the real-time identification (RTID) project, a five-year initiative that started in April 2004, is part of a major government project to increase the efficiency of the national fingerprint and criminal record repository in Canada. This system will replace paper processes and existing systems with reengineered workflows and automation.
What that tells me is that it's 2011, seven years later, and we're still talking today about the RTID system. In seven years, we do not have it implemented in a fashion in this country so that Canadians today can actually get a prompt and effective criminal record check.
I just want to ask you about the time. I'm going to try to narrow you down. If it has been seven years since this system started, what confidence do Canadians have that we'll have this system in place in a reasonable amount of time?