Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and honourable members.
My colleague, Mr. Platsis, and I would like to thank you for inviting us to testify today regarding this important issue. We serve as program directors for the Centre of Excellence in Security, Resilience, and Intelligence at the Schulich Executive Education Centre, part of the Schulich School of Business—a global top-ten business school at York University in Toronto.
The centre has emerged in response to growing concerns of a diverse group of public and private sector stakeholders. Within a context that defines the central motivating driver as increasing rates of change in society colliding with limited ability for adaptation, we're increasingly less prepared for the plethora of changes that define the 21st century, thus defining the probability of failure in both public and private institutions.
Within that context, the centre focuses on three particular areas of concern. The first is security. We are confronted by international instability, and at the same time we face emerging challenges, such as cyber-threats and terrorism by multiple actors in their various forms. The second is resiliency. We view that proactivity is better than reaction. The third is intelligence as both a force protector and a force multiplier, acting as the single most effective proactive measure.
This serves as our point of departure for today's discussion, and while the centre represents and affects the public, private, and academic sectors, as well as nations friendly to Canada, the comments and opinions made during this testimony are our own, do not reflect the view of any of the institutions we are affiliated with, and should be attributed accordingly.
The realities of the 21st century insist that the proliferation of information technology has allowed single individuals to be significant threats to the state, equalling the likes of many of the groups we are currently concerned with. Empirical evidence supports this view. In this reality the core issues of the immigration file are ones of security and intelligence, not technology or procedure or even defence. In an ever-changing environment where threats expand on an exponential basis, any meaningful progress on this issue requires a progressive, integrated, and cooperative approach.
The members should know that we see immigration as critically important to Canada. How policy is handled and developed plays a crucial role not only in the demographics and economics of Canada but also in the culture and the identity of this country. Since we are children of immigrants, our interests are defined by the remarkable possibilities that Canada's diverse multicultural society represents, and how it can serve as a template for the world. For all of that, we therefore believe that the net benefit of an effective customs and immigration policy will be that entry into and exit from Canada are more efficient and less intrusive, thus ensuring Canada's security. However, within this view our concerns focus not on intentions but on the vulnerabilities that the current state of immigration policy defines.
With that said, I pass over the remainder of my testimony to my colleague Mr. Platsis.