There are several things I'd like to highlight. One is that a number of principles need to be embodied in whatever effective asylum laws are put in place. Chief amongst those principles is the balance between security, accountability, openness, and fairness. Certainly, the stories of those who see Canada as a refuge, who have faced persecution for a variety of reasons, are heartbreaking at times.
In the interest of balance, I think it's also important to recognize the large number of stories of people who have abused those sorts of systems. This happens frequently. It tends to be a bigger problem, I think, in the U.K. and a few other European countries than maybe it has been in Canada. However, there's the example I gave you of Ahmed Ressam, the millennium bomb plotter who blatantly abused the Canadian refugee process. It happens elsewhere as well, and it's part of the trend in terms of liberalizing immigration laws.
In 1983, for instance, there were 80,000 asylum applications across the entire continent of Europe. Nine years later, in 1992, there were 700,000. It rose by almost a factor of 10. Islamists took advantage of the opportunity to hide in these massive crowds, and many of them became part of what would later be described as the first wave of Europe-based jihadists, and would become key figures in a number of terror cases. Abu Hamza, the notorious firebrand preacher who's currently serving a seven-year prison sentence and facing extradition from the U.K. to the U.S. when he's released, was among them. Ramzi bin al-Shibh eventually served as a Europe-based coordinator for the 9/11 attacks, after having been given asylum status in Germany.
I would say that an awareness of those stories and many others should inform effective policy.