Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mrs. Crock, I am taking the approach that we're looking at this as parliamentarians. As parliamentarians, we're here to look at the interests of Canadians first. Canada, like Australia, has a fairly generous immigration policy. It is also our task to make sure we spend the taxes of Canadians in the most expeditious way.
Now, within that immigration framework, if we detect people coming in and abusing our system, we need to have laws to deter this. If it's an economic migrant, then yes, they can certainly apply through our regular system, but if they're irregular arrivals and they're abusing the system, we need to take adequate measures to prevent this from causing disruptions in our society.
From that, we need to medically pre-screen some of these people. We need to establish their identity. We need to do all of this. That is, I think, one of the primary reasons why we need a certain amount of detention period—in order to ascertain that.
I've worked with refugee camps in Thailand, in Taiwan, and also in Hong Kong. In every place I've seen, they do use detention. I believe in Australia they do, too, so perhaps you can elaborate for me on what your suggestion would be if you don't use this method. Or how would you document these people before you let them into your country?