Fair enough.
I want to just turn for a moment to biometrics. I will express some dismay. This committee decided to study security issues in the immigration system, and one of the specific items we wanted to discuss was biometrics. We commenced this study two days ago and are going to continue for the next eight meetings or so. Today, the government came down with a bill that already has committed to a biometrics program, which I think is regrettable, because I don't know how our committee is going to give meaningful impact at this point to a decision that's already been made. But I may as well ask you about biometrics.
The Privacy Commissioner has stated that biometrics can be used in at least two ways. One is to verify someone's information, their identity, to make sure that they are who they say they are, and the other way is to match that person's identity with entries in a database. The Privacy Commissioner has indicated that she much prefers the collection of fingerprints to be used for identity verification, not for comparison to a general database. It's my understanding that the biometrics program announced by the government is going to do exactly that: it will collect people's fingerprints and then match them to a database.
I'd like you to confirm that is the case, and, if so, tell us if you have any concerns about privacy in that regard.