Monday, October 6, 2003

    Mr. Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, NDP): Mr. Speaker, this week political observers are witnessing a rare and wondrous thing: the genesis of a boondoggle. These catastrophic events occur when a minister ignores all public opinion and ignores all the leading experts and plows ahead anyway with a bad idea: in this case, the $5 billion biometric national ID card.

    The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration cannot seem to explain why this state interference into our privacy rights is warranted, so will he simply today tell us that he will scrap this disastrous idea before it blows into a full-blown boondoggle that would make the gun registry seem like a good deal?

    Hon. Denis Coderre (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I do not know what he is talking about but I know one thing and that is that we will have a debate in this country. I believe that when we look at public opinion we should take a look at the polls because the polls are pretty clear. If I were following the polls, he would be disappointed.

    That debate is so important because internationally every country on this planet is having it right now. The International Civil Aviation Organization is working on international standards. There is the relationship between Canada and the United States, at the transport level and at every level, regarding the use of biometrics, so we believe that even before taking any decision we should talk about it.