Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am not a legal expert like my colleague Mr. Giguère, but I am going to use common sense by recalling that, from what I know about law, you are innocent until proven guilty. I think everyone agrees with me on that. Having said that, we are against mandatory detention and, obviously, against the detention of children. A number of witnesses have said that passing this bill will lead to many challenges in court, which will create additional costs. We have talked about saving money, but, in light of the future legal challenges, I am not sure how we will be able to save money.
At any rate, in terms of the timeframe for reviewing the detention of children, as indicated under the first item, the age of the child should be consistent with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the detention of refugees should be an exceptional measure used as a last resort. Unfortunately, our amendment dealing with the age of the child was rejected. In addition, the detention should be applied in compliance with the conditions under the current Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. All those elements are already included in the act. Let me also remind you that all the experts have expressed their reservations about the detention of children.
We also have to try to mitigate the future damage caused by those detention measures on asylum seekers in general, and on children specifically. That is the reason behind our proposal to change the timeframe for detention reviews for designated foreign nationals.