Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, Mr. Chairman, but I am happy to answer any questions.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chairman, that's a bit of an open-ended question in the sense that what they're prepared to do depends to some extent on what we put in the way. Anything we put in the way they will seek to get around. That's the normal.... It's why the Income Tax Act used to be about this th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's to the national security adviser.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think that question would probably be better addressed to some of the other agencies, such as CIC or CBSA. Frankly, my job is more to the point of trying to prevent smuggling ventures from succeeding rather than what happens when somebody arrives here.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For my part of the job, yes, Mr. Chairman. It's really a focus on working with other countries, working with our intelligence and enforcement agencies to build a picture of what we should be looking at, and then working with other countries and other international organizations t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't think it's an either-or, Mr. Chairman; I think you have to do some of both. Clearly you need the right policies and laws in place to manage your sovereignty and your borders, but you also need the capacity, and need to exercise the capacity, to reach out and prevent thing

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chairman, I'm a lawyer, but I don't try to give legal opinions in areas in which I haven't done any work, especially in the constitutional area, not since, I think, I left law school. So you probably would be better to address that to somebody else.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You mean the particular aspect in terms of biometrics?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think, as was pointed out, biometrics is clearly part of the evolution of being able to identify people and be certain of your identification. Frankly, I haven't done any recent work on biometrics. I know that in some cases there are some concerns about how fast the work on bio

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In theory it should help. However, most of my job is to try to prevent people from even getting here or prevent ventures from getting here. I'm working one level ahead of that. Hopefully they won't depart.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Stories?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, we have had some successes in stopping the smuggling vessels. There was one that was seized by the Indonesians last year called the MV Alicia, and one more recently in Africa that was seized by the Ghanaian government.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not quite sure what the point of the question was towards. Obviously, in terms of the introduction of the bill, many lessons were learned. I think it was also learned that if we were going to be effective, we also had to add another string to the bow, which was prevention.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chairman, it's actually relatively straightforward. It's simply a question of trying to coordinate the various activities of a number of Canadian intelligence and law enforcement agencies to work with our international partners, whether that be countries in various parts of t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think, Mr. Chairman, that question would be better addressed to the departments responsible for the policy—CIC, CBSA, and others. From my point of view, I have worked with biometrics in the past, but as I said earlier, it's not a subject with which I have crossed paths in the