That's a fair question.
When we began the policy work on the biometric visa requirement, our initial idea was to do this incrementally, because it's a huge project, quite costly, and operationally complex. So I think we didn't want to bite off more than we could chew at any one time, which is why we'll be proceeding with an incremental application of the temporary resident visa biometric requirement on a growing number of countries, rather than universal application at once. This is following the incremental model of Australia and the U.K., for example. We'll start the system and then build on it, so there's an economy of scale there.
However, I think you raise an interesting question. I just think that this biometric requirement is going to improve our immigration security screening by light years, by orders of magnitude, particularly in the context of the enhanced information sharing agreements that we anticipate with the United States through the beyond the borders agreement. We will be able to much better identify individuals who might represent a threat to Canada's safety and will finally will be able to screen out those foreign criminals who have come to Canada and have been deported in the past, who have too frequently re-entered on fake documents.
It's hugely important, and I think this should be applied in principle to permanent residence applicants as well. I mean, for goodness' sakes, if someone's going to come to live in Canada for their entire life, we should use reasonable measures to identify who they really are and whether they constitute a security risk. So I would be in favour, in principle, of expanding the authority in Bill C-31 to include PR applicants as well.