Thank you very much for the presentation. I just want to make a couple of points before I ask you a question.
The government and the parliamentary secretary will say that the act has to be charter-compliant. Security certificates were not charter-compliant for almost 25 years, before they went to court and the court finally ruled on them. So beware when somebody tells you it has to be charter-compliant, especially when the Conservatives stand up and say they're the great defenders of the charter, which they hate.
The other issue is that, essentially, what this does is that it removes transparency and accountability. We lead the world in terms of the openness of the point system, which came into place in 1967. We were copied by the Australians; we were copied by New Zealand; we were copied by Europe; and the Americans are now looking at it.
But we do have a problem, and I have to acknowledge the problem. The problem is that the 2002 changes to the point system created a situation that was way too elitist. It was pushed by the bureaucracy. It certainly wasn't pushed by the political end; it was pushed by the bureaucracy. And the government's response seems to be let's give more power to the bureaucrats. I say this because when you say the minister, forget the minister, because it's the bureaucrats. Anyway, the idea is let's give them more power and let's make them less accountable.
I really have a problem when you have policy made in the shadows, because one of the nice things about our system is that it's supposed to be blind to your religion, to your background, and to the country from which you come. But what they're proposing here really opens itself up to abuse.
We can fix the system; all we have to do is to look at the Australian and New Zealand models, and we can make it responsive to the economic needs of the country and still keep the transparency.
So my question to you is, to what extent do you oppose the closed nature of what the minister is doing, or what the government is doing, in terms of putting more power in the hands of the bureaucrats? And what do you think it will do to accountability?