Mr. Speaker, the member opposite complains about government collecting data before it agrees to award grants to organizations. That is precisely the Canadian Alliance's complaint with respect to the HRDC file. It is because the HRDC bureaucrats failed to do their homework in some instances, failed to get enough data about who was receiving money and failed to examine the credentials of those people receiving the money, that we have some problems in HRDC right now. If the government is going to give money to anyone it has to find out who that person is and whether they are entitled to the money. So it has to ask close, probing questions.
The problem is that we have passed through a terrible age of political correctness in which too many bureaucrats have failed to ask the questions they should have asked. If people go to borrow money from a bank they darn well have to answer certain questions about how much acreage they have under cultivation and what are their basic assets.
What Bill C-6 is all about is that the existing privacy act protects this kind of information when the government collects it but when private corporations collect it there has not been adequate protection. The member is quite right. If the people in his community are answering phone calls from someone that they do not know, maybe someone from the United States, that is precisely the problem and that is precisely the problem that Bill C-6 addresses, except, in my view, it does not address it quite specifically enough. I think it has to be much harsher, much more direct and much more specific than what currently exists.
At least this party on this side of the House does want the government to ask those probing questions of any organization or any person it is going to give money to because it is taxpayer money. We are entitled to know how that money is being spent. If people want money from the government they darn well had better show some evidence as to why they deserve that money.
I would argue that, except in cases where a person's real personal financial information will adversely impact on the person's future, then of course it should be protected. I wish this legislation protected that kind of information more specifically. Nevertheless, it is going in the right direction.
As far as the member's other remarks, they are a little off topic. However, I have to say that I think Bill C-23 is an excellent piece of legislation, particularly because finally it defines marriage in law as a union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. I think that is a very fine thing that the government did.