Thank you.
I want to clarify one point. I was sent a note concerning Ms. Tie's comments with respect to what the minister said when he was here. She said that the penalties were meant to be punitive. He actually said that it was a deterrence measure. There's a big difference, from the perspective of what people may think of the word “punitive” versus the word “deterrence”. I think it's important to note that.
One of the things we have in front of us that Ms. Sims asked for yesterday is a document from Citizenship and Immigration that notes the top 10 source countries of refugee claims in Canada. You may not have this in front of you, so I will describe it. Hungary is now the number one country on the list. In 2006 it had 26 individuals seeking asylum; in 2007 it was 23; and in 2008, the year we lifted the visa restrictions on that country, it was 302. It's interesting to note that in 2009 it went to 2,532, and in 2010 to 2,333.
I do a lot of reading. I keep up on what's happening in the EU, and I didn't see anywhere that there was a terrible civil war or any type of oppression happening in Hungary during 2008 and 2009. But somehow, with the lifting of those visas, we had over 2,300 more people seeking to claim asylum in Canada.
Perhaps I could direct this question to Mr. Galloway. Do you agree that our system here in Canada is broken and that we need to fix the refugee system?