Madam Speaker, I am honoured to be the first in my party to speak, since this is a topic the Bloc Québécois has been looking at in response to a number of identity theft issues.
I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge my colleagues who have been with me from the beginning of the first session of the 43rd Parliament. We immediately started looking into the matter of privacy breaches and fraud. The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology unanimously agreed to take into account the previous work done to study what action we should urgently take to prevent the kind of situation we are in now.
I salute my colleagues on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, and I also want to point out that I very much look forward to studying this bill in committee. We had already unanimously adopted a motion to study privacy matters, and today a bill has been introduced. We spent a long time in committee looking into conflicts of interest. I had 40 hours, during which it was difficult to vote on a motion in committee.
That being said, prorogation did not do us any good. If Parliament had not been prorogued, we would not be where we are today. We would already be at the forefront when it comes to protecting our people from fraud and identity theft. I know that this happened to some people who work for the House of Commons. This is a complex and troubling issue. As the Privacy Commissioner said, the accounts of no less than 30 million out of 37 million Canadians were affected.
I would like to tell everyone here and the people watching us at home that their personal information was used. We are talking about a privacy breach. What happens when our personal information is not protected? Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind is the possibility of fraud. The way things stand, fraudsters have quite the opportunity to use the personal information of others.
Madam Speaker, I am sorry. This is my first time without a written speech in front of me and I feel like I could keep talking for an hour. I would like to ask for the consent of the House to share my time with the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.