Thank you so much for that opportunity.
You had some witnesses earlier in these proceedings who talked to you about the detention of children, and you were given the figure of 227 children detained in one fiscal year. That number was given to you by CBSA. I want to note for you that in reality the majority of children in detention centres are probably not being captured by the statistics, because they're considered by CBSA to be guests of the detainees rather than detainees themselves. That's because they're Canadian citizens and CBSA cannot detain children who are Canadian citizens.
CBSA takes the position that they're only detaining the non-citizen parents. The Canadian children who are detained with them are theoretically free to go, and are merely accompanying the parents in jail because their parents choose to have them there. That of course is a legal nicety that's as meaningless as the minister's insistence that Canada never deports Canadian-citizen children; they only deport their non-citizen parents. It's the parents who choose to bring their young children along with them when they're being deported. That's a way for the Canadian government to wash its hands of deportations and detentions of children that, from our experience at the refugee law office, appear to be significantly higher than the 227 reported by CBSA.
I wanted to make sure that the committee was aware of that. I suggest that if you have CBSA back before you, ask them for some clarification and more detailed numbers on the actual number of kids in immigration jails in Canada.