Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his comments regarding Bill C-47. However, I think he neglected to point out that in terms of debt to GDP, which is a very important measure in terms of debt to GDP, Canada is in a much better position than the other countries he is talking about in Europe, such as Greece, Ireland and Spain, regardless of the fact that their household debt figures, which he mentioned, are somewhat comparable.
I have a question for him. As far as e-government is concerned, the g-tech annual conference just finished up today here in Ottawa. Since the new Conservative government came into office five years ago, we have found a dumbing down of government online programs. When Reg Alcock was in this House and Paul Martin was the prime minister, we saw a lot of activity in the federal government in those days trying to get government programs online, transactional and usable to the citizens of Canada. This was particularly helpful for people in far-flung rural areas who had to drive or fly into cities to do their government business. Now they can simply do it online with a credit card.
There was some sort of a vision, some sort of a direction that was similar to what they have in England, the United States and Australia. However, since the present government came to office five and a half years ago, there has been absolutely no talk of any government online programs or any sort of measurement of any kind of success, no targets in fact. One would think that for a government that prides itself on wanting to make itself more efficient and provide its services to the public online and transactional, that would be one of the areas that it would prioritize and put some effort toward.
Why does the member think the government has not seized on this opportunity to make services more broadly available to the taxpayers of Canada and, in fact, save the government money in the process by making the government more efficient? Why would it be neglecting that area?