Mr. Speaker, my hon. NDP colleague has asked an excellent question.
Indeed, this piece of legislation must involve taking action before the deed is done. In other words, it must not be repressive legislation, since we know how hard that would be to enforce. The legislation should indicate how we must proceed and set out regulations to ensure that the private sector and other governments establish secure identification measures. Opportunities for stealing other people's identity must be limited as much as possible. It would be most unfortunate to create a piece of legislation based entirely on repression, one that simply says that anyone caught possessing the identification of five or six people will be fined. That is not the answer. We must be proactive and set out what is needed to reduce the instances of identity theft.
It would truly be a progressive, forward thinking piece of legislation. It would be to the government's credit to go beyond current practices for once and really move things forward.