Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to assure the House that we have made significant progress in cleaning up the social insurance registry to assure Canadians that the system is well managed.
We have now verified some 5.4 million social insurance cards. The number of files of citizens over the age of 100 has been reduced from 311,000 to 11,000 and we are negotiating with the provincial vital statistics agencies to further reduce this figure.
The bottom line is that HRDC has made significant progress in addressing the concerns raised in the auditor general's report of 1998.