Mr. Speaker, I understand some of the sensitivities about a date of birth. I am pretty sure all members would agree that should there be any question of someone identifying their date of birth might give them the information they need to do it.
The argument that there has only been one or two frauds, et cetera, does not necessarily reflect how much fraud there is. If we do not have the tools to detect fraud, how will we know unless we provide more tools?
I think we have done too much work over the years to raise the level of respectability of this profession. For the member to suggest that if we give the list to the political parties, all MPs will use it to phone people to wish them a happy birthday, is absolutely ludicrous. Our ridings have 100,000-plus people in them. The parties do have access to the list because that is part of the political process.
The issue here is that we need to pick our priorities. There are certain benefits in terms of providing the scrutiny process of electoral day by having that additional piece of information, even for the simple case where two persons have identical names, to make that identification proper.