Thank you, Chair.
This amendment is fairly straightforward. I'm sure my colleagues across the way are going to vote in favour of this because this amendment is brought forward as a result of hearing testimony from stakeholder groups, including legal counsel after legal counsel, and also hearing from the Anglican Church and other such groups that presented here. They all talked about mandatory detention.
This amendment addresses—and this is where we're really trying to listen to what is of concern to the government, which, from all the arguments I've heard, is identity and security checks. This amendment makes explicit that once identification has been determined and the security check has been done, the person be released immediately.
What this does—and I've heard my colleague across the way saying to me that, of course, once these things happen, there's no intention of keeping people in detention. Of course, they will be released. But do you know what, Mr. Chair? People get very nervous when they have to rely on “of course, it's there” when they can't read the language. This purports to put that language in place very clearly, and yet it addresses the concerns raised by my colleagues across the way and by the minister.
It says:
A designated foreign national whose detention ceases as a result of any of the circumstances described in subsection (2) must be immediately released.
I'm not going to reiterate what's in subsection (2) because I did that at the opening of my speech. I know this is one amendment that my colleague across the way is going to jump in and support. I can't wait for his support on this.