I'd like to go back to the exchange you had, Mr. Matas, with a member of the government side. You made a very strong statement that with this piece of legislation Canada is not—or potentially not—respecting the human rights of Sri Lankan refugees arriving on our shores. The response by the government side was understandably that the human rights violations they're experiencing in Sri Lanka are far worse than the human rights violations we will be submitting them to with unlawful detention.
Can you talk a little about what happens when a country like Canada, which is supposed to be one of the good guys around the world and a safe haven, demonstrates by arbitrarily detaining 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds that it is not willing to follow the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child? By adopting this legislation, Canada would be rejecting the decisions of its own Supreme Court. We saw in the Charkaoui case that you cannot hold someone for more than 120 days without due process and without legal recourse. Canada would be violating a UN Convention to which we are signatories that says asylum seekers should be given a rapid path towards citizenship, which with this five-year delay on their permanent residency we are impeding.
What happens when a country that's supposed to be defending human rights around the world is no longer defending human rights for people because it doesn't like the fact that they had to use irregular means to get here?