Mr. Chair, I wonder if we could move away from the identity theft issue and the notion of the patriot act and step back to personal management.
My hon. colleague raised the issue earlier about young people having access to credit cards and our colleague from another party described it as a good offer and a good deal. The member mentioned gambling and other sorts of addictions and that spending for some people could be placed in the same category as an addiction.
I wonder if there is not some responsibility either on the part of the government or on the part of companies offering these things, which are to their benefit and only a perceived benefit to the young person, to offer education seminars.
I was only recently in university and I remember these same offers and deals being pushed at us. We had special credit card days when companies arrived to show us all the wonderful things we could access and yet there was nothing on the other side, the responsibility side. To young people, 17, 18 or 19 years of age, who perhaps had no access or experience with credit before and not realizing the slippery slope that they could get into with limited income, this could potentially apply to the rest of their lives and develops into a pattern whereby their indebtedness keeps growing. Indebtedness in this country is growing increasingly. We are more in debt in any given year without the ability to pay it back.
Is it not the role of government and the industry providing the service to do some sort of education about the dangers that exist?