Obviously, anyone who is or has ever been a member of a terrorist organization or a criminal organization or has been involved in serious crimes is inadmissible to come to Canada under sections 34 through 37 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. One of the reasons we do our security screening is to identify whether an applicant for temporary or permanent residency meets those criteria.
If we have a real weakness in our screening it is because Canada doesn't have an overseas intelligence agency. Our ability to identify people who might have been involved in terrorist organizations is limited to the information that we have available to us. This is why I think it's so important that we expand our information-sharing agreements with allied democracies, such as the United States, who quite frankly have much more robust information on who might constitute a security risk to Canada.
It's why I think biometrics will be much more helpful. Let's face it, a terrorist is not going to apply for a TRV under his actual identity. He's going to create a fake biographic identity. Getting the fingerprints can be helpful in screening those people out.
For those who have never belonged to a terrorist organization and who have never been convicted of serious crimes but merely have the intention of coming here as sleeper agents, it's very difficult for us to get in their heads and subjectively identify that kind of malevolent intent of which you speak. That's why, quite frankly, an open country such as ours can never exclude the possibility that some people will not disclose their intention to do us harm. We just have to use all of the technology we can, the best information that's at our disposal, and the good judgment of our visa officers and border officers to identify those who would do us harm.