Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member should know, the Auditor General made an assessment of the services we provide under the Canada pension plan and other areas which handle something like seven million to eight million calls a year.
The major concern members of Parliament in my caucus have received is that people like to have direct contact with somebody on the other end of the phone, especially those in rural areas who do not have the privilege, as does the hon. member, of having touchtone phones but still have dial phones. We are not all as capable or as privileged as the hon. member in having these modern techniques. Maybe it is one of the perks we should look into with the hon. member: rather than a pension freeze he will not get his touchtone phone.
The fact of the matter is that-and this is important-we believe in service to Canadians. The best way to provide that service is to provide a major telephone bank that can take in surplus calls from across the country, make sure that people can be answered in either of Canada's official languages and get direct human services, direct responses, which is the reason we have established the phone bank.
Rather than relying upon the scurrilous opinions of some anonymous person about someone's language capabilities, the member should go to Bathurst himself to see how good they are.