Certainly the manufacturers and the biometrics have been tested by law enforcement agencies before they recommend them, but let's talk from a practical perspective.
You speak about human intelligence as being an alternative. If someone shows up at our border today—right now, as we speak—and says, “I want to come into your country”, there's an officer there who will be looking at and interviewing them as they are going through this process.
He doesn't know who you are; you could tell him anything. With a biometric, he can look you up in a computer, with your picture, possibly your iris scan, and your fingerprint, and he'll know exactly who you are.
Would that not be a useful tool for that intelligence officer?
It's not a question of coming in without having human interaction anyway. No one is saying that someone is going to walk to the border, walk into a booth, and the door will open and they'll get into Canada. There will be a person there who's going to be using that as a tool.
That's what the law enforcement people who presented before us testified: that it's an additional tool they could use to help them in the identification of an individual. The whole point of this is to ensure that we know the identities of individuals before they walk our streets, shop with our families, or are around our kids. We need to know who they are. That is the main thing they kept bringing up to us.
Do you not think that could be a useful tool for a CBSA agent at the airport or someone at the border to have in deciding whether they're going to allow someone into the country?