Senator Tannas: First of all, I think there is. We can hold public hearings if we want. We could figure out which committee needs to go. We can go out on the road and hold some public hearings.

At the end of the day, you can’t blame the political parties. Why would any organization rush headlong into something that is going to bring more accountability and a whole lot more transparency and work, et cetera?

As far as political parties go, I think there are a lot of complicated issues. You knock on somebody’s door, and they tell you something, “I’m going to do this; I hate this” — whatever. Now all of a sudden you’re in possession of information they’ve given, but they don’t know what you’re going to do with it.

These days with technology, you walk down to the bottom of the sidewalk, you key what that person said into your phone and it goes into a database. For all I know — nobody in here knows — it might go to the fundraising arm of the party immediately with a customized letter that says, “We are doing on X and Y” on the thing that person just said they hated. They could sell it — who knows — because they are not required under any law to do anything. They could have had a data leak. We had a data leak. The Green Party had a data leak and voluntarily disclosed it. They didn’t have to because they’re not subject to any law, but they disclosed it anyway. We don’t know if any or all the other parties have had a data leak and didn’t disclose it. That’s the situation.

So I agree with you. This is an issue that maybe a Senate committee could be helpful with. I don’t know, though. I guess that’s for us to decide in the fullness of time.

Hon. Brent Cotter: Honourable senators, a number of you might be aware that a witness at one of our committee hearings earlier today suffered a serious health incident. I wanted to inform senators of two things.

First, the witness is on the mend and appears to be in the process of making a full recovery, which is encouraging for all of us to hear.

Second, the staff of the Senate responded professionally, honourably and urgently to the situation to assist the witness. I want to give special recognition and thanks to Senators Osler and Ravalia who came immediately to the aid of the witness when they were contacted and assisted in his situation. Thank you for that.