Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the very moving words of my colleague, the hon. member for Western Arctic. I was particularly interested in the story about how his grandmother had strongly held views and personal reasons why she did not want her birth date publicized widely. I assume he meant that if she knew the government was planning on putting dates of birth on the permanent voters list for all the world to see, she and many others like her would object strongly for any number of good reasons. That is only one example.
I would like my colleague's views on the fact that the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics is current engaged in a five year review of the new PIPEDA legislation, Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, which is the obligation of governments and the private sector to protect the privacy of personal information that they might hold.
From my colleague's experience in election campaigns, does he believe that we, as a political party, could effectively protect that very personal information in the context of an election campaign, with 500 volunteers coming and going? All people need to steal somebody's identity is a name, address and date of birth and they get a credit card in another person's name. That is how easy it is in this day and age.
Could he expand, from his personal experience, how he might see abuse of this very private personal information in the context of the comings and goings of volunteers in an election campaign?