Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm sorry. Please go ahead.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Not necessarily.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, again, the question is, how do we define our national interests? If you're talking about it as it's geared to economics—that immigration is necessary for economic growth—then what about when there are economic downturns, when there are serious economic problems?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Are you, as a member and as a Parliament, ready to also retrench the numbers?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As a Canadian, I feel insulted that people who have broken all sorts of laws are still living off the taxpayer portion. I am a taxpayer, just as I'm a Canadian, so I feel insulted. I think a majority of Canadians feel the same way. The quick and short answer is that once the legal processes had been exhausted, he should have been deported.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would hope so, but in the place of origin of this gentleman, they wouldn't have the technology to put in the biometrics. I think that is precisely the problem we're dealing with: the numbers, the source origin. That has changed in terms of what was at one time the pattern of immigration from Europe.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, I agree. I mean, we need to have the checks and balances in place, the human intelligence is extremely important, and all of us know that the demand side is far greater than the available resource side. So how do we cut the resources for all the demand that is out there?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Right.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. I agree, sir—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, I don't have any comments. Your preliminary remarks I share with you, but we have different conclusions in terms of your preliminary remarks. You come from Sri Lanka. I was born in India. If there's any country that is multicultural, if you want to talk about it, it is India, with a billion people and the diversity that we talk about—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I said the “preliminary remarks”. On the secondary part, it's an ongoing problem. It's an ongoing problem of our bureaucracy. It's an ongoing problem of our institutions. Because we are a multicultural society, the people who are going to man those systems are constantly going to be facing the dilemma of how they adjudicate between people coming in and how they keep the country secure.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Briefly, we need the technological inputs we can get, and we need to put them in place. The dilemma is, as the previous witnesses pointed out, the question about our legal obligation, our constitutional obligation to the individuals on one side of the equation, and on the other side of the equation, exactly as you have mentioned, is the concern about our security, people who want to do us harm, which is quite evident.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It depends upon who you're sharing with. I think we need to share with other democracies, and we trust and demand that they keep those data secure. But if you're sharing data with non-democracies, much of the threat that we are talking about, which is below the surface—we don't want to put it in words—is from areas that are non-democratic societies.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, the quick answer is that this is the paradox. We put a high-tech instrument in place and we assume that will solve our problem. The ultimate is human intelligence. So on the Israeli issue, they have the most modern technology, to the extent that I have travelled in Israel, but the human intelligence is also immensely good.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, the sources we deal with about security, the people who can come and talk to you. Here I am, sharing information with you, information that we can provide. Our state and its people can reach out and keep tabs on the information that comes to them. I think that's...and the confidence that the people feel to come out and share the information.