Mr. Chairman, one could say that the committee has had problems with the parliamentary secretary's report before on this committee, particularly when they want to write minority reports to the committee. I remember the same thing happened at some point last year.
Be that as it may, the reality is what we're trying to do is to get this report to the House. If the parliamentary secretary were really keen on writing a minority report, he would have been better off to have supported the motion on Monday, because I think it's very much the intent of this committee that this report be tabled in the House before we go for break.
The reality is that the previous committee has heard all sorts of evidence on this particular issue. We heard about it in committee; we heard about it as we went across the country. I dare say that if it had not been for the inopportune election, if you will, this issue would have been addressed; it was, as I mentioned before, a top priority for the previous Minister of Immigration. When we had the present Minister of Immigration, I saw some hopeful signs in his looking at this whole issue of undocumented workers.
One thing we did say as well is that instead of dedicating resources to rounding up undocumented people and getting them out of the country, the government essentially should focus on something everybody on the committee agrees on. We've got two or three thousand criminals who should definitely be rounded up, and priority should be given to them, so the government officials can continue in that, but we need to find out the extent to which we are cutting off our nose to spite our face if they continue with the deportations. We're taking people who are contributing to the economy. They're keeping the economy moving, they're paying taxes, and they're settled here. They will be greatly missed by the economy.
The committee has always been on this issue, and I think we could all agree that we should have a priority on those two or three thousand people. Those are serious criminals that we really want to get rid of, as opposed to getting rid of the bricklayer or the carpenter or the mechanic. That's the message that we want to see happen.
You cannot say you want to add a report and you need so many days to frustrate the will of the committee. It would have been better had you not objected to the motion, which was proper and was found to be proper; then you would have had some more time to do that.
The fact is that tomorrow is the final day, and we want to leave a very strong message with the government that we want the deportation of contributing members of undocumented workers stopped.