Mr. Speaker, I have listened with interest to the speech by my colleague, particularly the matter of electronic government. We do have at our disposal an extraordinary new tool in the new technologies and the Internet, but this is a tool that can have both positive and negative effects.
We see what I would term the pre-generation of what the federal government is doing with these tools, for example the HRDC scandal and the cross-referencing with Revenue Canada of data on unemployed travellers, without any prior authorization.
I know the hon. member was on a fact-finding tour across Canada on this and there will be a Canada-wide conference. I would like to know from the hon. member if our duty as parliamentarians is to act as true watchdogs in order to ensure that these tools do not merely become tools of the high bureaucracy in order to control the system, and to ensure that democracy gains from them, rather than losing?