House of Commons Hansard #90 of the 37th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was terrorism.

Topics

Canada—Costa Rica Free Trade Agreement Implementation ActGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Deepak Obhrai Canadian Alliance Calgary East, AB

Mr. Speaker, I want to be recorded as voting yea to this motion.

Canada—Costa Rica Free Trade Agreement Implementation ActGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Rahim Jaffer Canadian Alliance Edmonton Strathcona, AB

Mr. Speaker, I would like to be recorded as voting yea to this motion.

Canada—Costa Rica Free Trade Agreement Implementation ActGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

James Rajotte Canadian Alliance Edmonton Southwest, AB

Mr. Speaker, I would like to be recorded as voting yea to this motion.

Canada—Costa Rica Free Trade Agreement Implementation ActGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Ted White Canadian Alliance North Vancouver, BC

Mr. Speaker, I would like to be recorded as voting yea to this motion.

Canada—Costa Rica Free Trade Agreement Implementation ActGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Brian Fitzpatrick Canadian Alliance Prince Albert, SK

Mr. Speaker, I will be voting yea to this motion.

Canada—Costa Rica Free Trade Agreement Implementation ActGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Rob Anders Canadian Alliance Calgary West, AB

Mr. Speaker, I would like to be recorded as voting in favour of free trade.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Canada—Costa Rica Free Trade Agreement Implementation ActGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

(Bill read the second time and referred to a committee.)

The House resumed from October 1 consideration of the motion that Bill C-31, an act to amend the Export Development Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Export Development ActGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading of Bill C-31.

Export Development ActGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

Liberal

Marlene Catterall Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON

Mr. Speaker, I think you would find consent that those who voted on the previous motion be recorded as voting on this motion now before the House, with Liberal members voting yes.

Export Development ActGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Garry Breitkreuz Canadian Alliance Yorkton—Melville, SK

Mr. Speaker, Alliance members present will vote no.

Export Development ActGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

Bloc

Pierre Brien Bloc Témiscamingue, QC

Mr. Speaker, the members of the Bloc Quebecois oppose this motion.

Export Development ActGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

NDP

Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB

Mr. Speaker, the NDP members will vote against this motion.

Export Development ActGovernment Orders

6:05 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Jay Hill Canadian Alliance Prince George—Peace River, BC

Mr. Speaker, the coalition is voting against this motion.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Export Development ActGovernment Orders

6:10 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, this bill is referred to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

(Bill read the second time and referred to a committee)

Export Development ActGovernment Orders

6:10 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)

It being 6.12 p.m., the House will now proceed to consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

All-Numeric Dates ActPrivate Members' Business

6:10 p.m.

Liberal

Peter Adams Liberal Peterborough, ON

moved that Bill C-327, an act to establish a national standard for the representation of dates in all-numeric form, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, I greatly appreciate the support of my colleague from Winnipeg South. He is a big supporter of this kind of thing.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to Bill C-327, which I introduced earlier this year. It is an act to establish a national standard for the representation of dates in all numeric form. The bill addresses a matter which is of increasing importance in this post-millennium computer age. I would say this is our date with destiny.

I want to thank all those who have worked hard to promote standardized all numeric dates over the years. This is a dry but nonetheless very important topic that affects everyone in Canada and indeed everyone in the world.

I would like to mention Ross Stevenson, the former MP for Durham, who introduced a similar bill in 1990. I would also like to mention the member for Elk Island who has introduced bills on this topic and who continues to crusade for a standard system of expressing dates. I would also like to express my thanks to Duncan Bath of Peterborough. He and his colleagues have championed this cause for many years.

My riding of Peterborough is often remembered as a bastion of opposition to what we used to call the metric system. It is less often remembered that Peterborough was also a national base for the promotion of the metric system, especially through the efforts of the Canadian General Electric Company and people associated with that business.

The bill has nothing to do with the metric or the SI systems, but it does deal directly with the importance of national standards in everyday life, in business and in science. Interest in international standards continues in Peterborough to this very day.

As long as dates are written out in longhand or spoken they present few problems. For example, the 2nd day of the 10th month of the year 2001 is a very clear way of giving today's date as long as one speaks English or, in the translated version of this speech, as long as one speaks French.

However, all numeric dates are increasingly used in the programming of computers, for example, in mass billings or other mailings, or by people communicating with each other by computer. Such dates are compact and, properly expressed, they can be read by people irrespective of their language.

However, without a standard format both humans and computers can quickly become confused, sometimes dangerously confused. Let us say that I come across a can of food with a due date of 04/01/02. I ask the members of the House whether that date is: February 4, 1901, February 4, 2001, April 2, 1901, April 2, 2001, January 4, 1902, January 4, 2002, April 1, 1902, April 1, 2002, January 2, 1904, January 2, 2004, February 2, 1904, or February 1, 1904. This one date, 04/01/02, has 12 possible interpretations if we do not know the order of the numbers in the date.

Do I open this can of food and consume the contents because that is the due date? I have to say that some members are immediately saying the early 20th century dates like 1901 or 1902 are hypothetical. This is not the case. I once found a can of meat quite well preserved after more than 100 years in a cache of a 19th century expedition to the Canadian Arctic. Sadly, the due date had been worn off by blizzards during the 100 years so I do not know which date format was used. I have to say that the meat was fine.

I should also point out that using a mixed letter/number format does not help much.

The date I gave before of 04/01/02 could be 04/Jan/02. People who read English or French might think they understand exactly what that is but this could still represent a date in 1902, 2002, 1904 or 2004. Even with Jan inserted, for those of us who read French and English, there are still four possible interpretations.

At present, not only do businesses and government departments use different date conventions, the same business or department may use more than one. For example my friend, Duncan Bath, in Peterborough received an account statement from his bank with a day/month/year date on one line and with a month/day/year format on the very next line.

Lloyd Kitchen of Manitoba, in a letter to Maclean's , pointed out that 02-04-06 means April 2, 2006 on a Manitoba driver's licence, I say this to my friend from Winnipeg South. It means April 6, 2002 on a GST form. It means February 4, 2006 on his car repair bill, and June 2, 2004 as the best before date on a package of prunes. Just think what those prunes could do if the date was misinterpreted.

The ad hoc use of numerical dates is confusing, inefficient and potentially dangerous. For example, there is the danger of confusing dates on prescriptions and medications or on cheques. All this could be solved quite easily by agreement on a standard all numeric date format.

My emphasis is on agreement not on the format, but the format I propose would be year-month-day. This is not my idea. This is a standard approach accepted years ago by the International Standards Organization as ISO 8601 1988 and adopted by our own standards body, the Canadian Standards Association, as a national standard of Canada; of course it is a voluntary national standard of Canada because that is the way we operate here.

They argue, as do I, that the most useful approach is to go from large to small, from the general to the particular. We do this in most other cases, for example: hours/minutes/seconds; dollars/cents; for angles it is degrees/minutes/seconds; and even our numbering system goes from thousands/hundreds/ tens/units, from large to small.

The bill proposes that Industry Canada promote this national standard so that today's date, when expressed numerically, would be 2001/10/02. That is the format on which once we have agreed on the order there can be absolutely no doubt. It would be October 2, 2001. The way it is said or written out in full does not matter. It is only when it is all numerical that we must know the order of the digits.

In the format I am proposing, I suggest that the year be put in full. Therefore it would be 2001/10/02. That is for added clarification.

I urge all members to support this standard approach to the use of all numeric dates. It will make our lives safer and less confusing and it will make for greater efficiency in our government and non-government organizations.

Not so long ago, by spending billions of dollars, the whole world survived Y2K. The problem then was dates embedded in computer programs and records, in formats that varied greatly. Although we still do not know, this may have solved the problem in computers but it has not solved the problem for people using computers and their products. The public is inconvenienced, put at risk and ultimately has to pay for the lack of a standard way of expressing dates.

I strongly urge the federal government, especially Industry Canada, and agencies to move quickly to set an example on this issue. Let us begin by programming the machines that spew out bills, cheques and mass mailings in a standard date format. Then we can forget about the date format in all those cases as it would be programmed in. Then let us move on to standardized dates in less automated cases.

I commend Canada Post, the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency and some other organizations for being reasonably consistent in these matters. I am sure they would be glad to advise others on them.

I hope this debate will draw the attention of those in power to set the date format for their organization so the public has the right to read the date in a standardized, unambiguous manner.

I look forward to comments from all my colleagues here in the House on this very important topic.

All-Numeric Dates ActPrivate Members' Business

6:20 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)

If members will permit me, when a motion is presented by a member from the government side we usually go to the opposition, but I would like to give the floor now to the parliamentary secretary to put the government's position.

If the House does not give its consent I will go to the opposition members but this may not give the government time to put its position.

All-Numeric Dates ActPrivate Members' Business

6:20 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Ken Epp Canadian Alliance Elk Island, AB

Madam Speaker, I think there will enough time for everyone. The member only used 10 minutes.

All-Numeric Dates ActPrivate Members' Business

6:20 p.m.

Beauce Québec

Liberal

Claude Drouin LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today on behalf of the Minister of Industry to speak to Bill C-327, an act to establish a national standard for the representation of dates in all-numeric form.

As the hon. member for Peterborough mentioned, all of us here in the House will be familiar with the experience of seeing a date such as 03-04-2001 and wondering whether it means March 4 or April 3. The member was most eloquent.

This confusion can affect more than on-time bill payments. It can affect the use of prescriptions, for example, or “best before” dates on a wide range of products.

I am pleased to be able to respond to this issue as it allows me to speak very briefly on the importance of voluntary standards and Canada's national standards system. A standard is a document that describes the performance, dimensions or impact of a product, survey or system.

Standards are used in a very wide range of applications, from the Internet to iron ore composition to quality management.

In Canada, voluntary standards activity is co-ordinated by the Standards Council of Canada, a federal crown corporation that fosters and promotes voluntary standardization. The council oversees the work of the National Standards System, a network of about 250 organizations. Four of these organizations develop standards. These are CSA International, Underwriters Laboratory Canada, the Canadian General Standards Board and the Bureau de normalisation du Québec.

The remaining organizations provide conformity assessment services such as testing, certification, or registration to quality management systems such as ISO 9000 or environmental management systems such as ISO 14000.

The Standards Council is also responsible for Canada's participation in the development of international standards. The council is Canada's member on the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, and the International Electrotechnical Commission, or IEC.

ISO and IEC bring together volunteers from over a hundred countries to develop standards for almost every product imaginable, from ski bindings to medical devices. These standards support the trade of safe and reliable products across borders. In Canada alone, there are 3,000 volunteers that participate in international standards development.

Canada is not just a participant in this effort, but also a leader. Over 100 ISO and IEC technical committees, subcommittees and working groups are headed by Canadians, including the committees that developed the influential ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 series.

As the world moves towards a single, global market, international standards are becoming increasingly important. Efforts are underway to harmonize Canadian standards with those of our trading partners. A growing majority of national standards of Canada approved by the Standards Council are based on international standards.

This brings me to the bill in question. The hon. member has modeled his proposal on ISO standard 8601, titled “Data elements and interchange formats-Representation of dates and times”, developed in 1988 by the International Organization for Standardization.

This standard gives guidelines for indicating dates and times in a numeric format, represented by eight digits, as year-year-year-year, hyphen, month-month, hyphen, day-day.

I would note that Canada has already adopted a national standard in this area which is virtually identical to the ISO standard. The Canadian standard, CAN/CSA Z234.4, entitled “All-Numeric Dates and Times”, does indeed specify a numerical approach as recommended by the hon. member.

I would like to make one comment on the exception in clause 6 of the bill, which reads as follows:

The last two digits may be used to represent the year (a) in the case of years nineteen hundred and ninety to nineteen hundred and ninety-nine, inclusively; or (b) in the case of the year two thousand and thirty-two and subsequent years.

This exception is not part of the existing Canadian standard and could introduce confusion.

I can relate that Industry Canada is advancing a wide range of measures to promote the use of the existing national standards. These measures include the use of the date, standard and departmental correspondence and documentation, and encouraging the similar use by industry portfolio agencies and support for the Standards Council of Canada's efforts to promote adoption of the standard.

I wish to thank my hon. colleague from Peterborough for raising this important issue. Although the bill to create a national standard is not necessary at this time given the existence of such a standard, we will continue to make every effort to support its use in Canada.

All-Numeric Dates ActPrivate Members' Business

6:30 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Ken Epp Canadian Alliance Elk Island, AB

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin my speech by expressing my extreme jealousy to the member for Peterborough. I believe it was at least four years ago that I first entered a bill to do exactly this.

Even though I have some mathematical credentials, and I know something about statistics, the odds have been totally against me and in this random draw for private members' business, I have never been drawn, not once. So mathematically, I am just behind the eight ball, so I express my jealousy. However, I congratulate him for having the good luck of being chosen to have his bill debated. It is unfortunate that it is not votable and that we could bring this thing to a conclusion and actually do it.

I certainly speak in favour of the bill. It is not quite as good as mine, but it certainly is going in the right direction. I will explain that in a few seconds.

I was involved with computers from about the time they were invented. As a matter of fact, when I first started teaching at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, believe it or not, we were still teaching our students how to use a slide rule. After a while, along came mechanical calculators, then later on electronic calculators. I was involved in those first years when we got those big, behemoth computers that occupied a whole room and had less memory than my little pocket machine.

I did some programming and was involved in designing programs for our students. As well, I taught programming. Again, here was a missed opportunity. I wrote a program for word processing, including a mail merge before Bill Gates was even born, and now he is a multi-billionaire. I did not realize that I had come onto something that was really very useful. I could have been financially independent if I had gone to work on it and recognized the value of it.

I wrote that program to help me in my administrative work. At that time I was the head of the mathematics department at NAIT.

I have used this standard year/month/day for approximately 40 years. When I first wrote computer programs and if I had data that required sorting, I discovered almost immediately that if the date was given in the order of year/month/day and was sorted numerically, it produced a correct chronological sorting of the data. If that information was put in any other order, then it could produce January, February, March and so on, regardless of what year they were in. If the month was put first, it sorted by month instead of by year. Obviously when sorting data we want the year to be the primary sort element and then the month and the day. It is totally logical.

As my colleague from Peterborough has already pointed out, in all other areas we do go from the large unit to the small. That is totally logical and is the way it is always done.

I would like to say a little about my bill which will probably never be debated or voted on, and I am very discouraged about that. However, my bill took quite a different approach than the bill of the member for Peterborough. He is asking that the Minister of Industry take such measures as are necessary to promote the use of the national standard. That is a very fine bill. I can support that.

My bill, Bill C-281, is in the draw right now but it has never chosen. Its purpose is to change the Canada Evidence Act. It basically says that where there is a date in a document and if it is expressed using numerals only, then if there is a dispute this is the interpretation that should be put on it.

I am not coercing or forcing people to change, as long as the documents they give are 100% clear. In other words, they may use 3/4/5 which means April 3, 2005. If there is a statement somewhere else in their document that states the dates as being given in that order, then there cannot be an ambiguity. It would be clear.

On the other hand, if they had given a date which said their pension would start on such and such a date, and if that date was before they were born, one could argue also that that was not really ambiguous.

However, there are many instances of ambiguity and since we have gone into the year 2001, as the hon. member pointed out, the combinations are now myriad. I saw one the other day that used numerals and the abbreviation of a word. I do not remember the exact date, but it was along this line: it said 02 October 01. Now the word October clearly indicates the month, but I do not know if that is the October 1, 2002 or the October 2, 2001, which happens to be today. It is ambiguous.

It only makes sense for us to have a unique relationship with numerals. There should be a unique meaning when we use a symbol.

For example, we go to a service station to fill up a vehicle with gasoline. Let us say it comes to $30.62. We do not walk in and say we do not know if we should pay $30.62 or $62.30. There is no ambiguity because we clearly understand that the number of the digits before the decimal point indicate the number of dollars and the digits after the decimal point indicate the number of cents. Yet, when it comes to dates, we do not have any problems with writing these dates all over. Over and over again I have seen the examples the member gave. Again, I have had a great deal of correspondence from people who have had these same ambiguities.

On my bank statement not long ago they used just two numbers, one for the month and one for the day. Of course I just received the statement so I knew that when it said 10/3 it meant October 3. However it was still a bit ambiguous.

I would also like to point out that if this were votable I would vote in favour of it because it is a step in the right direction. I would like to advise the hon. member opposite that I think he may still be permitting an ambiguity with clause 6 of his bill. He is probably aware of that.

Part of the bill states that the last two digits may be used to represent the year if it is between 1990 and 1999 or subsequent to the year 2032. If we use 95, I am still left guessing again if it is 1995 or 2095. I would cut that out of there. After our Y2K experience, we should get in the habit of using four digits to represent the year.

Those are my thoughts on this. This makes so much sense. Why can we as Canadians not just put this into legislation and say this is the standard, start using it?

I would like to see some of my bill incorporated into it with respect to business billings. When a business sends out a bill and the date is ambiguous, if the person does not pay it until the date that he interprets it is due, it can be to the advantage of that individual instead of to the business because the business was sloppy in the way in which it produced its bill or statement. This way we would have a rapid change.

I think we would find that if this bill were passed and the Minister of Industry put out some ads saying that this was the new standard and that we were going to start following it, then Canadian usage would change very rapidly. We then would be able to communicate with one another in such a way and actually understand what each other meant, which might be quite novel in Canadian history.

All-Numeric Dates ActPrivate Members' Business

6:40 p.m.

Bloc

Stéphane Bergeron Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC

Madam Speaker, I am also pleased to address this bill introduced by the hon. member for Peterborough. I was very interested in his comments.

I congratulate him for raising this important issue in the House. I also express my regrets to the hon. member for Elk Island, who did not have luck on his side. The hon. member for Peterborough did, but it is the reality of us parliamentarians in this House. Our initiatives, whether it is motions or bills, are randomly selected. This time the hon. member for Peterborough was the lucky one, unlike our colleague from Elk Island.

The fact remains that, beyond the issue of chance, the two were pursuing the same objective, which is to establish a national standard for the representation of dates in all-numeric form.

The member for Peterborough resorted to humour to present some Kafkaesque situations that are unlikely to occur in reality. In spite of all the constraints imposed by the existence of several models of representation, we manage without too many problems to pick our way around the various ways of identifying the date in numeric form.

The fact remains that, beyond the very funny presentation made by the hon. member for Peterborough, this could indeed create problems and confusion which, in turn, can often have serious consequences.

This bill is not a votable item, but if it had been one, we would probably have supported it, because its objective is laudable.

In a world that puts the emphasis on information technology and computers, we were able to see firsthand the importance of the representation of dates in all-numeric form with Y2K. At the time, it was feared that our computers would go haywire, because we were switching from the two digit representation, such as 70, 80 or 90, that had always been used since computers were first introduced, to something like 00 or 01. This could potentially create problems, since computers might have interpreted this as if we were going back to the beginning of the last century.

We then saw the need for a standard that would prevent such confusion and the serious consequences that it might have.

When one has a date that reads 01-01-01, everyone knows that means January 1, 2001. We scarcely need know where the year, the month and the day fit in that sequence. Generally speaking, we are all capable of knowing what month, year and day are referred to.

Returning to the example of my colleague from Peterborough, of 02-03-04, we are then in a bit of a problematical situation. We can no longer tell what the year, the month and the day is in the sequence.

I believe indeed that it is appropriate for a universal standard to be recognized so as to avoid this type of imbroglio.

The hon. member for Peterborough proposes use of the standard recognized by the International Organization for Standardization to which, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry has pointed out, Canada subscribes. I believe that the objective of my colleague from Peterborough, and he will correct me if I am wrong, is, on top of acknowledging that Canada subscribes to this international standard, to see that it is actually applied.

Experience has proven beyond reasonable doubt that in actual fact, people continue to put the year at the end, the year at the beginning, or the month at the beginning.

We end up with a variety of situations and representations of the numeric date that may, as I said earlier, create complications.

Beyond the recognition of this standard and the fact that Canada subscribes to it, we must look to its actual application.

The standard proposed is the year, represented by four digits, followed by the month and the day, each represented by two digits and separated by a hyphen or a space.

Obviously, because practices vary considerably and Canada is a bilingual country, the bilingual fact often giving rise to different interpretations of events, I took the trouble, and members will understand that, to look at the French language standards and how they compared to the standard proposed by the member for Peterborough, a standard used by the International Organization for Standardization.

So, in consulting the various reference documents published by the Office de la langue française, we noted that, indeed, usage in the French language conformed to the international standard being proposed by the member for Peterborough.

I take the liberty of quoting Français au bureau produced by the Office de la langue française, which is available in electronic format on its Internet site.

—the date and the time may be represented in all-numeric form to meet certain technical requirements, including those of tables, schedules, coding, various readouts. In this case, the following order is to be used: four digits represent the year, two represent the month and two represent the day, in this order, in accordance with an international standard—

This is of course the one referred to earlier.

Separators to be used between the year, the month and the day are either a space or a hyphen. Neither a colon nor an oblique may be used.

I think, as far as the French language is concerned, the practice conforms entirely with what the hon. member for Peterborough is proposing.

Now, the Office de la langue française also provides that the year may be represented by just two digits. However, given the change in the millennium, this may give rise to some confusion. So, the practice recommended by the Office de la langue française is to use four digits to represent the year.

The bill, as my colleague from Elk Island and the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry mentioned, introduces a standard or companion rule that I would describe as Byzantine, and which may actually add some confusion to the current situation. The rule is that found in clause 6, which states that the years 1990 through 1999 as well as year 2032 and subsequent years may be represented by the last two digits. Obviously, the reasoning is sound, 2032 makes sense, since there are no months with more than 31 days.

However, in a case such as this, I would think that we have to trust in people's intelligence. If we adopt a rigorous method that stipulates that the year comes first, then surely people will know that when it says 31 at the beginning of a sequence, it refers to the year. People will understand that, if the standard is applied rigorously, when a sequence begins with 31, it refers to 2031 or 1931. This is the problem with a sequence where the year is represented by only two digits.

Now, why does this bill provide, in clause 6, that the years 1990 through 1999 may be represented by two digits? That remains a mystery to me. I think it only adds to the confusion. This clause should be deleted, if this bill were to be adopted.

In closing, I will say that it is an entirely logical standard. Things are usually represented in this manner, from the largest unit to the smallest unit: metres, centimetres, millimetres; hours, minutes, seconds; dollars, cents, and so on.

Therefore, I believe that the member for Peterborough's goal is commendable and completely legitimate. We endorse it, obviously, and it would be our pleasure, if this bill were to be voted on, to support it.

All-Numeric Dates ActPrivate Members' Business

6:50 p.m.

NDP

Bev Desjarlais NDP Churchill, MB

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak on this debate tonight. I want the member for Elk Island to know that when it was mentioned today that private members' business was the issue of the dates, I automatically thought that it was his bill. I have seen it come by my desk each year as we come back from our summer recess and I automatically thought it was his. In heart and soul it is his, and he can take credit for that at least.

My colleague from the Bloc said that this is a logically rational standard. What is scary is we all agree it is a logically rational standard and we do not have it in legislation. Following the standard has been voluntary but putting it in place has taken some 31 years.

If I recall correctly, when I started my first full time job after high school in the early 1970s the whole metric issue was just coming out. People were cursing, screaming and complaining about the metric system, about having to change miles to kilometres and about having to buy new measuring cups. They were going to have to do all these horrible things, but they did them. They did it as far as kilometres and miles because they did not have any choice. Signs in one municipality could not be in kilometres per hour and the signs in another municipality in miles per hour. It had to be standardized. We recognized that and it was done.

After high school my first full time job was doing clerical work at a hospital. I was told that the date had to be written down by year, month and day. It seemed totally logical to me. Of course I was a young person getting out in the workforce and I was going to do everything I was told. I am actually recognized as being a bit of a goody two-shoes about following rules and regulations. I have faithfully done this year after year because I was told that was the way it had to be done, that it was the law. I thought it was all part of the same law on the metric system.

Imagine my surprise a few years ago when I saw the proposal by my hon. colleague from Elk Island that we put this date system in place with regard to evidence. I would go a step further and say we have to legislate it. It has been 27 years since I started doing it, and if it is still voluntary and a good part of the industry is not following it, then it is time to go that step further.

I have listened to my colleagues here who all recognize that this is a good thing. Canadians must be wondering, “Why the heck are they not legislating it? This is common sense”. Then they probably think, “That explains it. It is common sense. It is logical and rational. That is why the government is not doing it. It would make sense”. The entire parliament is agreeing on it, so the government is not going to do it. We should be standardizing the date to year, month and day.

My colleague from the Bloc mentioned the seriousness of it. He is quite right. I indicated that I did clerical work in a hospital. We can well imagine what would happen if each and every nurse, doctor and every other health care professional chose to write the date as they saw fit. If a case went before the courts, or if someone checked back on certain procedures, medications or other things on a patient's record, the dates would not be known. A number of patient records go beyond one month and the dates could be different within the files.

I would stand here and say no big deal within the hospital system if the rule were in place and everybody followed it. Quite frankly, as the years progressed, fewer people followed the standard. I was the kind of person who said that we have to follow it because people would stray from it. It did become an issue. Even though the hospital had it as a standard, over the years it sort of lost its clout and it faded away and there were differences.

It is crucially important that we do not leave those issues to chance. There is a safety concern.

As far as bank statements, pension accounts and those things are concerned, it is not okay to have a difference. A number of people out there may not recognize that the dates are written differently.

We need a standardized date. Quite frankly it needs to be legislated. Hopefully then in 27 years we will all be doing it properly because quite frankly the voluntary way has not worked. It is crucially important that it goes a step further and is legislated.

The bill by my colleague from Peterborough is not a votable item. I was going to stand and ask for unanimous consent to make the bill votable, however I agree that clause 6 just does not cut it. I think the bill has to go back to the drawing board. My colleague from Peterborough and possibly my colleague from Elk Island should throw it back in the bucket and by some logical chance, or maybe by some great chance the Minister of Industry could take the bull by the horns and put it in place without having to go through the whole process because it is the right thing to do.

All-Numeric Dates ActPrivate Members' Business

6:55 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Chuck Strahl Canadian Alliance Fraser Valley, BC

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-327, an act to establish a national standard for the representation of dates in all-numeric form. I commend the member for Peterborough for bringing forward the initiative. I am not sure that it is seizing the nation, but on the other hand for those who have to deal with it, such as the member who just spoke, it can be quite bothersome.

It was easy to find references to this. A Canadian wrote to Maclean's on March 1, 1999 and said:

What does 02-04-06 mean? I checked it according to date systems on several documents around the house. On a Manitoba driver's licence, it would mean April 2, 2006. But on a GST form it would be April 6, 2002. On a car repair bill, 02-04-06 would be Feb. 4, 2006. And on a package of prunes, the best-before date would be June 2, 2004.

This is the kind of thing that is pretty aggravating, and I find it unusual that even governments in the country cannot agree about standardization.

I do not want to dominate interprovincial and federal-provincial negotiations, but it seems to me that a good way to move this issue forward would be to have a simple memo from government departments asking “Is everybody okay with the following system?” All governmental and intergovernmental departments would deal with it in a certain form from a certain date forward and people would be told that if they want to do business with a government department they should be on the same standard as well. If that were done we would be well on the way to standardization.

Once every government in the country is working from one standardized way of representing the date in numeric form it would become the standard. It can start in the federal government and other governments and I am sure it would quickly work its way through the system.

The issue that does concern me deals with the due date on the package of prunes. Everyone should realize that while it may just be a package of sour milk or a package of mouldy prunes to one person, it may be far more important to another person.

I do think back to the Y2K problem where a simple thing like the date in a computer caused some real consternation for the whole known world at that time. That computer issue, which is another way in which that numeric representation of the date is used extensively, shows the need to have standardization. Standardization is needed in the computer industry and the Internet industry. Those industries are of growing importance to all of us, so we do need to standardize and I think we should get at it. We should not force people to do it, but the example should be set at the government level.

The member who sponsored the legislation also mentioned that he would like it referred to the Standing Committee on Industry if it were to pass. It will not be voted on today so it may never actually get there. However, it is interesting to me that the Minister of Industry has taken on the issue of the Internet as his new national dream. A recent newspaper article states that the industry minister wants to fund such a project. He calls this initiative, this fibre optic cable and satellite delivery, the "new national dream". It could cost as much as $4 billion.

The initiative here tonight costs very little but when it is combined with some of the other efforts that the Minister of Industry wants to be known for as the architect of the new national dream, it has a $4 billion price tag.

I do not want to discount the importance of the Internet, broadband networks, fibre optics connections and so on, but I think that right now Canadians want a different priority from the Minister of Industry. I believe they do not want to talk about a national dream of fibre optics connections so much as they want to talk about a national dream of national security.

When we talk about $4 billion for interconnecting Canadians on the broadband fibre optic system, I do not think the budget will allow it. Bank of Montreal economists are predicting that next year's budget will possibly have a $5 billion deficit. We cannot afford this kind of thing at this time.

It is one of the things the Minister of Industry will have to adjust. He may well agree that standardization of dates and numeric form is a good idea. It may well be something he wants to promote and I would encourage him to do so. However, this other issue is something I do not think Canadians want to pursue at this time. It is a matter of priorities.

Certainly regulatory change is fine but is $4 billion for the fibre optics plan for the Minister of Industry's future run for the leadership bid something we can actually afford? I would say the answer is no. It is not a bad idea. It is not an evil thing. It is just that when there are budgetary constraints, and it is worldwide and Canada is no different, we just cannot afford $4 billion for computerized connections from coast to coast.

When I talk to people, numeric dates are far from their minds. Fibre optic connections are far from their minds. They are talking about things they want for personal security. People are not talking about a big military presence; they do not even think about that so much. They are talking about economic security, security and integration on things like immigration, borders and foreign affairs. They want to bring that together. They want all government departments to think in terms of what security means for a family, for an individual, for the nation.

People want economic security and a fall budget out of the government. They want to see a whole bunch of things that mean something to a lot of individuals. While numeric representation of dates is something they would find interesting, they would hope that parliament, the minister, the industry department and the government generally would look after their security concerns, economic and otherwise, so that they and their families can go forward with confidence.

I encourage the member for Peterborough to continue to push the issue forward. It would be a good issue for the industry committee to be seized with and it should be brought forward. I will be sitting on the industry committee and would be happy to support that initiative down the road, after we deal with some of the more pressing security needs of Canadians over the fall session. I hope he will support the initiative. I will support him once we settle the security issues which I think Canadians want us to be seized with right now.

All-Numeric Dates ActPrivate Members' Business

7:05 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)

The hon. member who moved the motion has five minutes but he has agreed to give three of his five minutes to the hon. member for Ancaster--Dundas--Flamborough--Aldershot.