Mr. Chair, I will answer the hon. member's two very important questions. I will start with the expenditure in terms of comparing it with the gun registry.
It really saddens me that we use this special time of the year as we head into the Christmas season and use the parallel of the gun registry. The only simple answer I have for the hon. member, who has good intentions, is this. Why does he not ask the police association who have told us “do it, support it”? If he can convince them to tell me as a member of Parliament and all others to scrap it, then I would be glad to stand by his side and say that we will scrap it. I ask him to speak to the police association. Therein lies his answer.
On the second question, my hon. colleague asks why do we not charge them for identity fraud for making these cards. Let us say that somebody stands outside a store and says he is going to rob that store. We live in a civil country. The presumption of innocence is there. Until that person actually goes into that store and commits that crime, the authorities cannot and should not arrest this individual. They can arrest upon action. If the individual goes in and robs that store, then they have the right under the law to arrest this individual.
How do we say this to somebody? I used to work with Popular Mechanics and made a few things at home. Maybe sometimes that was infringing on violation of patents, but I did not go out and sell the things. Let us say that I was making a stereo in my house or something. Maybe that was a violation, but if I had gone out to market it, thus violating somebody's patent right, then I should have been charged with a criminal act. In this case I say to my hon. colleague, how do we do that? The intent to do wrong is there, yes, but on intent alone we cannot charge the individual. The moment they use these new gadgets, yes, we should charge them.
Here is what I have found, and I will close with this. Industry, government and banks--and we have tried it with our passports, for example--are continuing to upgrade the system to make sure that fraud does not occur, but we have heard this over the decade or so we have been here that as much as we upgrade the technology, someone will come along and try to beat the system. Unfortunately, that is society, and it is incumbent upon us to make sure that we invest money properly to beat them as well as they try to beat us.