Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the remarks of the hon. whip of the government. I need a couple of further points of clarification if he might provide them.
Earlier today I asked another member of the government why there appears to be a contradiction. On the one hand the government claims that there is genuine universal support for this legislation, for these changes to the elections act. Yet what we find are quite a number of amendments coming from all directions to this particular piece of legislation.
It would seem to me that if there is support, and if this has been well thought out, indeed if it has reached the point where the government in its infinite wisdom has decided to fast track this and bring forward time allocation to hurry this through the House with very limited debate, it is a piece of legislation that is all encompassing and that certainly is going to do the job with no need for amendment.
That is the first question I have for the hon. whip. There certainly appears to be a contradiction in this piece of legislation.
The second point is he talked long and grand about the confidentiality of the electoral lists once in place. I wish I could say I share his confidence in that this list will be kept confidential. It certainly makes one wonder when a few weeks ago it was revealed that a filing cabinet showed up at some place in Ontario with seven or eight Revenue Canada files belonging to individual Canadians. This is the way the government treats the confidentiality of information.
Given that it is well known that computer software can be hacked into on a regular basis nowadays, I simply do not share the confidence of the hon. member and his government that this particular list will be secure and will be used, as he stated, only for electoral purposes. I wonder if the hon. member could clarify further how he intends to keep the list truly confidential.
If so, why is there a need to identify voters by gender? Could he perhaps touch on that issue as well. There is a real fear among female voters that their addresses and their places of residence will become known and become public knowledge. The gender associated with that obviously is a concern for security purposes.