Mr. Speaker, the bill has gone through a long process. One might ask why that is. The privacy and rights of Canadians are probably the most important issues we deal with in the House.
The parliamentary secretary said there was a lot of confusion created at the committee by various people.
I would like to point out that when the Minister of Public Safety spoke to us about the bill, he emphasized that this particular information would not be used in the United States for any other purpose. Since then we have had countless amounts of information including from the ambassador, as my hon. colleague pointed out. In his letter he said that this information would not be “shared widely for law enforcement or for immigration purposes”. Certainly that is not a denial of the use of it for those purposes. It says they would not use everyone's name and information for those purposes. Quite clearly, the minister himself created that confusion.
The parliamentary secretary said that in negotiations if we could have convinced the U.S. we had proper security in Canada it has the ability within its laws to provide a full exemption for Canadian information on overflights. The parliamentary secretary said it would cost billions of dollars to accomplish the extra security required to get up to the standards of the U.S.
Where did the parliamentary secretary get the information to say that the costs to create a security system that would match up to the United States would be immense?