Mr. Speaker, I was honoured to have a few minutes in the first hour of debate and I am now honoured to have the opportunity to continue my thoughts in this second hour of debate. In the first hour, I talked about what an elegant solution my colleague put forward in terms of organ donations, which is to have it on our tax returns and then the information going to the provinces. It is an inexpensive solution. It is an elegant solution that is not going to impact what is provincial jurisdiction or what is federal jurisdiction.

I talked about my experience as a nurse in rural communities. Many times, people were severely injured in accidents. We wanted to transfer them quickly and it was difficult for families to make those decisions. They were dealing with the very difficult situation of a loved one who was traumatically or fatally injured and did not know what their wishes were. From my experience, that helps me recognize how important it is to have those conversations up front. As we do our tax returns, what better time to think about those sorts of issues.

I put out householders in our community and I like to highlight some of the different private members' bills that have been put forward in the House that I think are particularly compelling. I sent out a householder that arrived on people's doorsteps a few weeks ago. If anyone thinks that their community is not on board with this, I do not think I have ever had such a positive, strong response to a private member's bill. I had people writing and phoning my office to ask how soon can this happen and say what a fantastic idea it is. As we look at our vote in the House, we can be quite reassured that Canadians from coast to coast to coast see it as a positive option.

I want to make a quick note. When people do their tax return, they would indicate what their wishes are; this is called consent. I want to contrast that with another issue, where government is trying to extract information from people. Right now we have an issue with Statistics Canada where it wants to have all individuals' private banking information, line by line, e-transfers, the times people went to Costco, how many times they went to Shoppers Drug Mart and so on. It is asking the banks to do basically a data dump with all that private financial information. I contrast where I have had an overwhelming response to that issue also where people are saying that is their data and their information and Statistics Canada cannot touch that without their consent.

There is a lesson to be learned here. When we ask Canadians to make a difficult decision, but it is their decision and the government is facilitating the decision, which is what is happening in my colleague's private member's bill, where people are making a decision around being an organ donor or not, and they want their wishes to be translated to the province, that is something that Canadians get behind.

When something imposes our personal information going to a big government bureaucracy, there is an incredible amount of mistrust. As we are looking at these two very different issues, it becomes important to recognize that Canadians typically want and rightfully need to give consent for these sorts of issues.

I hope when it comes to the vote as we finish the debate, I will then be able to do my 2019 tax return and have the opportunity to check that box. Many people would be very grateful to have a seamless way to add their names to the list.

Cathy McLeod

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