I cannot express my disappointment that we did not get unanimous support for that, and it would have been good. However, I do want to acknowledge the move that has been made by the government side and the fact that they did hear the concerns. It is with a great deal of reluctance that I'm going to be supporting the amendment, because I believe for people who get designated as irregular arrivals, this is an improvement on what existed originally. And our job here as the official opposition is to try to mitigate these circumstances.
At the same time, I do have to once again—and I will try to do it succinctly—express my gravest concerns about keeping people in detention. I'm not talking about people who are arriving here as terrorists carrying machine guns. I'm talking about people who are fleeing for their lives. Once they are here and they seek asylum under the Geneva Convention, and then once we know their identity and once we've done the security check, if they are not a danger to us, I think it's unconscionable to keep them detained. What I'm still finding very difficult is that, first, 14 days is still too long, and six months after that....
As I said, I made my points earlier. I won't repeat them, but I just want to express my concern. But in order to make things better for the people who arrive than the bill would have otherwise provided, I will be supporting this amendment.