Mr. Speaker, as we do with all privates members' bills, we look at them very carefully and we no doubt will very carefully look at that one. He says the bill would modernize investigative techniques for police officers. This is what we are doing.
The people, interestingly enough, who were the very first ones to come forward and to applaud this were the people in the credit card industry, bankers, et cetera, the people who sometimes end up getting burned on these things.
However, I can tell members that police agencies across this country welcomed this because, just as the hon. member raised the subject of investigative techniques, they were saying there is this huge gap, that by the time we have these criminals who are using this information stealing people's identity and information there is a whole slew of people who are part of this process leading up to the actual crime, and in many cases the hands of the police were tied in terms of doing something about that.
There are a number of things and I challenge and welcome people to have a close look at that. For instance, there are scanning machines that allow people to pick up other people's information. This is exactly the kind of thing that we want to pick up.
When the hon. member in the Speaker's Chair was first elected, some of these things did not even exist. If I had asked him what a scanning device would be, he might have had a completely different idea what this would have been 20 years ago when he was first elected to the House, but we now know that people are using these types of equipment and they are gathering up information.
The irony is these things are not just confined to Canada for our police to investigate. It underlines again how we have to cooperate with people outside of this country because this information does not just stay within Canada. It gets exported to the United States, Britain, Europe and other places where in some cases it gets used for criminal purposes.
So, yes, we have to be, as we try to be, very responsive to those concerns brought forward by investigating agencies. At the same time, of course, we have to balance the civil liberties of individuals. But we know that these gaps exist, and this is a terrific step forward.
I can tell the hon. member that I have had very positive feedback about this. Since the first day we announced that we were going forward on this, I have had good feedback.
My colleagues in my own party have been urging this. They know from constituents who sometimes get burned by identity theft and are taken advantage of, they welcome that. Even the provision I mentioned at the end about helping to compensate victims, I can tell members, has received widespread support among the colleagues within my own party.
Again, I commend this to the House and hope that members will have a look at that and at some of these provisions. I think they will agree with me that many of these things were long overdue and that they should have speedy passage.