Nine days, and the minister is doing an incredible job.
I know there are some serious questions being addressed that have to do with procurement and sponsorship et cetera, but I will just change the pace a little bit, if I may, and talk about government online, e-commerce and some of those aspects. It is an area that is of great interest to me. Our colleague from Winnipeg South has spent a lot of time studying government online. One of his initiatives is to try to encourage more online activities and initiatives for the Government of Canada.
Government online of course has many different components. Some of them include accessing information for citizens. Some of them have to do with transacting through the federal government and that could be for goods and services.
E-commerce is of course is a rapidly growing area where many productivity gains are possible. We hear a lot about consumer to business e-commerce. There is government to business e-commerce. There is business to business e-commerce. In fact I believe that globally we have only begun to scratch the surface of what we can do with e-commerce.
I would appreciate it if the minister could comment on this and give us an update on the government online initiative, especially the secure channel project.
Before he does that, I would like to speak briefly about the MERX system. MERX is an acronym for something, but I do not know what. It is government online procurement. A small or medium sized enterprise or in fact any type of enterprise can log on to the online system. Through that system a business can very easily discover what procurement contracts are up for bid. It is a very handy tool. I know that many small and medium sized businesses, in fact many businesses of all descriptions, use this system. MERX is a relatively new system. It replaced the former system, but nonetheless I think it is an advanced and a better version of what preceded it.
Very recently at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance we were looking at the question of cost recovery and user fees. We did have a brief presentation by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the CFIB, which represents, as all of us in the House know, a very wide spectrum of small and medium sized businesses across Canada. It brought its brief to the finance committee in the context of cost recovery and user fees, and the CFIB was concerned because the fees had gone up from $5 a month to $30 a month, I think it was.
CFIB's discussion with the finance committee centred on the process. In its view the process had been fast tracked and there had not been adequate consultation, et cetera. That was one aspect of it and that really fits more into the vein of the cost recovery and user fees, which really falls within the purview of the Treasury Board, but nonetheless it is an area in which I have developed quite a keen interest and I am working on a number of initiatives.
The other aspect was that a small or medium sized enterprise that was paying $5 a month to access this government procurement system was then suddenly faced with a bill of $30. This is quite a significant increase. Representatives of CFIB were quite concerned about that, because for many small and medium sized enterprises this was the vehicle, the way that they could discover in an efficient and effective way what types of procurement contracts were available.
I wondered if the minister could discuss the MERX system and how effectively it is working and if he also could address the concerns of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business in regard to the fee going up from $5 a month to $30 a month without, in its view, adequate consultation, but particularly from the point of view that this is quite an additional cost burden.
I wonder if the minister could take that point and elaborate on it to give us a briefing regarding where we are with government online services, government procurement of goods and services and particularly the secure channel initiative. Could the minister put it in the general context of e-government with a particular focus on the MERX system and some of the concerns raised by small and medium sized enterprises?