Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member on his excellent speech, even though it is coming from the opposition benches. He touched on many points that are of great interest to all Canadians of compassion.
He touched on one point that was especially interesting to me. That is the suggestion that there should be some exchange of information between departments like Revenue Canada, or whatever it is called, the revenue agency, and human resources development in order to identify those Canadians who are most in need of the types of programs that the government would like to give to them.
The problem is it is a privacy issue. The reason this information is not exchanged is because interpretations of our present Privacy Act make it impossible for government departments to trade that information.
The member will recall that the Minister of Human Resources Development found herself in a terrible quandary when it was revealed a year or so ago that human resources development was keeping this type of cross-file information and the privacy commissioner had complained. Furthermore I would like the member and I, and others in the House on the backbenches, to address this issue because this interpretation of the Privacy Act is doing great damage.
The member, who has many aboriginals in his community will be familiar with the non-insured health benefits program. This is a case where free drugs are available to aboriginals. It is well known that some aboriginals, a very small percentage, are abusing the program to the point of receiving so many drugs that deaths are occurring. This could be prevented, as it was almost prevented, by Health Canada ensuring that the information from doctors and pharmacists is exchanged through a central clearing agency which exists. However an interpretation by Health Canada of statements made by the privacy commissioner stopped this interchange of information. Consequently we have had people dying.
We have had other instances where former civil servants have accessed government programs that they should not access. All we have to do is access the files that contain their pension information.
I wonder if the member opposite would address this issue of privacy. Should we not be revisiting the Privacy Act to ensure that Canadians are better served by the programs?