David Graham

[Customs Act, September 18th, 2017]

This past weekend, Mr. Speaker, an Amber Alert was issued in the Laurentian region when Louka Fredette and his father went missing.

If they had crossed the American border, we would never have known. If the bill before us was law, however, we would have that information.

Does my colleague believe that to be an important change?

[Customs Act, September 18th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on what our colleague from Beloeil—Chambly was saying about giving information to the United States. Our bill is very clear: it will make it possible to get information from the United States, but it does not allow sending information to the United States.

I would just like to know if my colleague agrees with that statement.

[Customs Act, September 18th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate some of what my colleague has said, but I want to confirm that the Conservative Party is indeed fully supporting this bill. If so, we are very pleased to hear that.

[Customs Act, September 18th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the minister for his kind words with respect to the passing of our friend and colleague Arnold Chan, who I very much miss already. However, that is not the topic of today's debate. Could the minister tell us what current systems exist today to find out who is leaving the country? What information do we have today, if anything?

[Preclearance Act, 2016, June 21st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, luckily I am already wearing a tie.

One of the major federal issues in my riding concerns the Mont-Tremblant international airport, in La Macaza. This airport is a port of entry with no customs service on site.

In 2008, a motion to concur in a committee report on the matter was unanimously agreed to by the House; it concerned the airport in the community of La Macaza. The motion, moved by my predecessor, Johanne Deschamps, on June 17, 2008, sought to waive the customs charges at the airport. These charges, which do not apply to the largest international airport, can run over $1,000 per airplane, because officers have to come in from Mirabel for each flight.

Bill C-23 finally provides a solution that will allow more international flights to land in our region, which is supported just as much by tourism as by the forestry industry. By eventually having Canadian preclearance services throughout the United States, we will have the opportunity to have a port of entry that we will really be able to use.

I would like my colleague, the member for Ajax, to give us an idea of the process and the timeframes involved in reaching agreements that will allow tourists to visit the Upper Laurentians by having international flights service the Mont-Tremblant international airport in La Macaza directly. This would also be a boon for the Aéro Loisirs flight school and aviation as a whole.

This is also a great help to a region such as ours that relies so heavily on the airline industry, like other similar airports and communities across the country.

[Statistics Act, June 20th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I think it defeats the purpose of Shared Services Canada if we start getting all the departments back in their own systems.

We went from 460-odd data centres to seven for a reason. If we start undoing that work, we will not be making progress. It will make things more complicated, take longer to fix, cost more money, and make no meaningful progress. As I said before, if we really want to fix the issues that are being brought up, proper firewalling and proper administration of the systems will address the problems.

[Statistics Act, June 20th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, perhaps if the member does not want to see it as an improvement, he could just follow the trend line to see where it is going.

It does help move things forward. When we make changes and put the same people back and continue with the work, progress is important.

[Statistics Act, June 20th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is always appropriate at this hour in this place.

The member will know that I recently learned that the reason Douglas Adams picked 42 as the answer to life, the universe, and everything is that 42 is the ASCII code for an asterisk, which is a wild card, which means it can represent anything one wants it to. However, if that is used in statistics, the end result is a whole lot of bad data.

Making sure that we are using good data for everything we do is critically important lest we end up in the improbability drive and have no idea where we land.

[Statistics Act, June 20th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I am not entirely sure how to respond. I do not know the details of how the networks are set up, but a properly run IT system will provide the appropriate firewalls within their systems to prevent data from going where it is not supposed to go. That is the whole purpose of having a high-security system. If security is the issue, then we need to address that issue properly, but Shared Services has an obligation to provide every department with the properly protected systems they need.

[Statistics Act, June 20th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, Shared Services Canada, as the member knows, is of particular interest to me, as I served briefly with him on the government operations and estimates committee. The idea of consolidating our databases and systems and so forth was, in principle, a good one. I do not think it was particularly well implemented by the previous government, and it had quite a few problems, as we have seen, going forward.

Personally, I think it should be using a whole lot more open source offers. That is my personal opinion. I think this issue needs to be addressed.

While Shared Services Canada got off to a bad start, it will improve with time. It has no choice but to improve with time to properly address the issues of Statistics Canada and every other department that depends on it. There is always room for improvement. As the Prime Minister always says, better is always possible.