Mr. Speaker, the first thought to go through my mind was that it used to be when we phoned someone and we got their answering machine we said “I don't want to talk to a machine. I am tired of this”. Now when we phone someone, if they do not have voice mail, we say “Damn it, I can't leave a message”. Again, our understanding is shifting.
The hon. member raises a really good question. When the member was speaking about the buttons and the voice mail, I am not certain whether he was speaking about the specific aspect of service to citizens by government. In that I agree completely.
I always want to say this. I have worked with a lot of technicians and the information policy folks in the Canadian government and I think they are trying as hard as they can to change the understanding of this. The argument I make is that this is a much more fundamentally important issue than anyone realizes.
That is why it is bedevilling to government. If it were easy to do we would have done it or someone else would have done it already. Having said that, I have a lot of sympathy for public servants because they are beset upon all the time by the vagaries of this place and the hot debate that takes place in any democracy. Therefore, they tend to build systems that are rules based, in part to protect themselves.
The hon. member and I would do the same thing if we were subject to the same pressures. It is not a criticism. When we put them into a very rigid system, a computer, we have a sort of doubling of the effect. We have a rigid set of rules to begin with and a very rigid system. All of a sudden we create service systems that do the exact opposite of what we want.
I bet the hon. member's files are full of examples. I know mine are. I actually started writing columns on stupid government. I hope that over the next few years we will see, as the understanding improves, a change.
The hon. member's point about education was absolutely right. This is new turf for all of us. We are all just feeling our way around on this. We think it is simple because we see the boxes and we understand it, but the boxes are just the collectors. The real power lies in the fundamental information and how it gets used. It will tell us things about our government and our country that will surprise us.