Elinor Caplan

[Customs and Revenue Agency, September 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, here are the facts. CCRA sends out almost 110 million mailings and has an error rate of .0000011%. I challenge the member to find anyone who has a better, almost error free, rate. That does represent from January to today about 130 cases and, unfortunately, there will be more because of either human or mechanical error.

However, in the Shawinigan case, I have asked the privacy commissioner to work with us to conduct a full review.

[Motions for Papers, September 24th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I would ask that Notices of Motions for the Production of Papers Nos. P-2, P-3, P-4, P-6, P-7 and P-8 be transferred for debate.

[Motions for Papers, September 24th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I would ask that Motion No. P-1 be transferred for debate.

[Customs and Revenue Agency, September 24th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I was very clear. I was referring to the one tax centre where over 700,000 letters had gone out. In this case, one had been misdirected.

Overall nationally, across the country last year over 100 million pieces of mail went out. It was approximately one in a million or about 130 letters that were misdirected.

Even if there is one it is too many. I can tell the House that we are reviewing all of our national systems to ascertain whether it was inappropriate access, mechanical error, fraud or break-in. We are doing everything that we can to protect the information that people give us.

[Customs and Revenue Agency, September 24th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, if the member had listened to my original answer, he would know that what I said very clearly was that we send out millions of letters. In fact, over 100 million letters were sent out from CCRA last year and approximately one in one million was misdirected.

I said that from time to time mistakes and errors happen, and that is one of the reasons why we are doing a review of all of our national systems because the protection of privacy is so important to us. We want to review and ensure that whether it is fraud or break-ins or inappropriate access, we do the best we can to protect it.

[Customs and Revenue Agency, September 22nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, as I said, while we regret this mechanical problem that occurred in one out of 700,000 pieces of mail, we have taken appropriate action. Let me say again, we want all of the safeguards that we have placed to ensure that our information loss is minimized to be state of the art, and we are conducting an indepth review of all the national systems.

We are also conducting a national review of all TSO and TC facilities to ensure that precautions are taken against break-ins, theft and unauthorized access. We are doing that because service to the Canadian public is our priority.

[Customs and Revenue Agency, September 22nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I can tell the member opposite that we know exactly what happened. In that tax service office last year, over 700,000 pieces of mail were sent out. In one case, due to a mechanical error, this situation occurred.

My understanding is that all of our national systems are being reviewed to ensure that they function properly. Mechanical error does happen from time to time. Further, we are looking at all of our tax service offices and our tax centres to ensure that proper precautions are taken in all of our--

[Customs and Revenue Agency, September 22nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I wish that I could assure the member opposite that we would always be perfect. We subscribe to the theory of continuous improvements, and our people and our equipment are excellent. However, as I said, we are reviewing to ensure that our systems are as good as they can be, and when a mechanical error does happen, as happens very rarely, we apologize. I regret this particular situation very much.

[Customs and Revenue Agency, September 22nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for the question.

The information is as follows: last year that tax service office sent out over 700,000 pieces of mail. There was a mechanical error that caused this particular problem. The agency and I regret that. I want the member to know that every effort is made to ensure that our safeguards against information loss are state of the art. We are conducting an indepth review of our national systems.

We are also conducting a review of all TSOs and TC facilities to ensure that precautions are taken against break-ins, theft and unauthorized access.

[Taxation, September 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I want to be absolutely clear that there is no discrimination. The member should be reassured that when it comes to the Income Tax Act, the Canada pension plan and the Employment Insurance Act, all Canadians are treated equally.

Further, he should be aware, and I will repeat it again, that we have been working with the Canadian Hockey Association. We want to ensure that young players are eligible for the benefits to which they are entitled and, where there are issues where the hockey teams may have difficulty, fairness provisions are in place to assist those teams.