Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question.
I will deal with the privacy issue first. Revenue Canada has actually come a long way over the last several years in being a kinder and gentler department. That is not to say that there are not significant abuses periodically and that is not to say that it could not be improved.
My fear is that the progress that has been made could be largely undone if we develop an arm's length agency that will have, whatever way the government cuts it, less accountability than the current agency which is tied directly to parliamentarians in this House as a department and which reports to a minister.
In terms of the basic ways to improve consultation with Canadians, I would suggest that the government set a standard for its committees and actually give committees the ability to pursue public policy in a creative, non-partisan, consultative way. There is no shortage of great ideas. Most of the people with the greatest ideas are not in this House because they are too smart to run politically or they are not masochists.
There are great ideas out there and we need to make our political parties, our committees and this parliament more receptive and welcome to those people who have good ideas.
As I mentioned earlier, Canadians have more access to information now than they ever have before. We as a parliament have a duty to engage Canadians in dialogue on public policy issues, not to tell them what is good for them necessarily, but to engage them in a discussion about what is good for them. Periodically we could actually learn something.
We do not have to reinvent the wheel. We need to go back to the committee structures that have existed and have been productive in channelling public opinion and thought into good public policy.
We also have to be careful that public policy does not simply reflect short term public opinion. That can sometimes be bad as well.
There are some great ideas out there and we need to work with Canadians. If we work with Canadians and listen to some of the expert advice out there we will find that Canadians want and need a fairer, flatter tax code.
As polling indicates Canadians recognize that we have the highest tax of the G-7 countries. Despite what the Minister of Industry has stated, this is an albatross on the productivity of Canadians. It is holding us back as we enter the 21st century. It is part of the secular decline in the Canadian dollar. In the long term that decline can reduce productivity even further. Canadian businesses are denied the opportunity to buy some of the equipment and software they need to compete globally because much of it is imported.
We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We could go a long way if we were to ensure the committee structure as it exists was actually used by the government and parliament the way it was designed to be used. We should stop muzzling committees and operating them like branch plants of the ministers' offices.