Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what the member had to say. It sounds like he has some good ideas. I have said in my speech that there are a lot of good things happening now, but often they seem to be half measures and very uncoordinated. I recently had a town hall meeting. Constituents asked fundamental questions of some very capable departmental officials. They were somewhat surprised at how constituents seemed to fall through the cracks.
The case example of course is that there is a constituency of several thousand Canadians who rightfully should receive benefits. They finally find out about the programs and begin to get benefits. However, they have been missing things, like the widow's benefit, for many years. Then the government says that it will only go back 11 months, that it is too bad, so sad. The government did not tell people what was available. We could end that kind of discrimination.
Also, we need to build into our systems client accountability. Taxpayers need to have some kind of bill of service rights, or whatever, so they can hold their local offices to account when they try to dial a number and are placed on hold forever or when they go to a local office to see somebody, but there is no privacy for them to talk about their personal situation or no coordinated system for them to take a number. They may mistakenly enter an office and wait an hour only to be told they are at the wrong office.
There are all kinds of local issues that do not allow large bureaucracies to really interact at the community level. That accountability feedback loop is still missing. We need to be client and service centred. Then we could also at the academic level come up with those large ideas. I think there are a lot on both sides of the House. We can do so much better for Canadians.