Mr. Speaker, I want to try to direct the member's attention to a particular area. We all like to stand up and talk about the grand ideas that will transform programs and save billions of dollars, however impractical, inefficient or incredible those ideas might be. What I am trying to talk about in this bill is something that my mother used to say to me and I suspect other mothers said to their children: "If you look after the pennies, the pounds will take care of themselves".
This is not about a massive restructuring of government programs. This is about, in many little steps, doing the work of government better, more efficiently, faster, giving better service and at the same time, saving money. There are all sorts. Computer programmers have come to government for the last 20 years and said: "If the government will just build this system, we will be able to deliver better service and save money". Unfortunately that has not always proved to be the case.
However, we have learned over time the techniques necessary to do exactly that. If we look at what has happened in the private sector: we have seen massive changes in management; a flattening of management hierarchies; more direct delivery at the service level and the use of expert systems.
Each one of the programs I mentioned here keeps a file on people with information on their names, addresses, postal codes, all of that identifying information. Why do we need to have four or five such databases? Why not one? Think about that between departments.
Canada Post was mentioned. Canada Post is building or is near finishing a database that has the name and address of every single Canadian in it. Why do we need to replicate that? Why can we not take advantage through proper information sharing of that information to save us money. Will this produce $5 billion savings? No, I do not think so. Will this flatten out the need for new resources, provide better service and save money along the way? Yes, it will.