Madam Speaker, I am sure Canadians really will be impressed that the government has a commitment from the American ambassador who is stepping down. That is again another problem with this file. The Liberals are never up to speed on it.
I will quote specifically from the testimony of the Privacy Commissioner at the ethics committee. She said:
--that the Privacy Act is not up to the task of protecting Canadians' information, of setting an adequate standard in the face of this new phenomenon of the international circulation of information.
She said that we were not up to the standards and that we had a problem. The government needs to act. If it is interested in working with the Privacy Commissioner, why did it not act sooner, as this was called for years ago? We should have had better action. In my opinion, the government still is not taking a responsible stance because it is not coming forward with any correspondence.
Is there specific correspondence that the Liberals can table today which requests the U.S. government to fix the patriot act to ensure that Americans keep their hands off Canadians. Who are the Canadian citizens who they are holding information on right now?
