Mr. Speaker, people in northeast Winnipeg are fed up with scam phone calls. They are among the thousands of Canadians who are harassed by unscrupulous con artists by phone every year. Some fall victim to these schemes, losing their life savings and their sense of trust in the world around them. My office is receiving more and more reports of these calls. The people on the line pretend to be in a position of authority and threaten legal action if their target does not agree to pay a bogus fee. Some people are getting one or more calls a day and are reaching their wits' end.
While Canadians are encouraged to report these scams to the RCMP's Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, too often they are met with a busy signal. When that happens, the information that should help international law enforcement find and shut these guys down does not get to where it needs to go. Clearly, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre needs more resources to do its job protecting Canadians from these ill-willed and irritating invasions of their privacy. I call on the government to do so.