Mr. Speaker, I was lucky to be a parliamentarian in 1988. Back then, not all civil servants had computers.
Technology has been able to assist government in many different ways, and I have not even touched on the web.
At one time we did not have anything but paper, and it took time to work things through the system.
Let there be no doubt that even when we were transitioning back in the early 1990s and a live-in caregiver had to go through a live-in caregiver process, all paperwork and everything else was done within three months. When we took office it was years. Back in the early nineties most of the work was done through paperwork, yet it was still done within three months.
We can take advantage of technology. We need to continue to move forward with that. I am very familiar with it.
It is amazing what can be done with an immigration file number, a date of birth, a person's last name, and the type of information that can be pulled from the Internet. That sort of thing did not exist before. It does today, and that is a positive thing.
This government will continue to improve the quality of client services as best we can. One can tell how we are doing by looking at processing times. In many areas the processing time has been virtually cut in half.