I'll take the first stab at that.
I think this was brought out in the testimony. Biometrics serves little use if it has no information to be cross-referenced against. As mentioned, the information gathering starts abroad. We need to give our visa officers and embassies the capabilities and intelligence resources, so they can actually start finding out about a person abroad.
When we have this information, which is a Canadian database, biometric information can then be confirmed against that. That's as opposed to simply carrying around a card, or any biometric information, that says “I'm George Platsis”, when I can very easily manipulate the data on that card or passport to make my name “Joe Smith”.
That's my quick take on it.