I was really glad to hear what you had to say, Ms. Douglas. I'm also someone who cares a lot about human rights. We probably have a lot in common. I created the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which is there to stand up for Canadian individuals when governments are pushing them around.
I think if we ask the wrong question, we may end up with the wrong answer. If we ask whether we have concerns about people who are wrongly detained, I would say yes, I regret that there are people who are detained who ultimately should not have been detained. If instead we ask whether we should close down the whole refugee system because we can't identify people, or because we don't have the security measures in place, then obviously, we'd be denying all those people who are truly being persecuted in their far-off lands. You and I and everyone else in the room would say that this was a wrong decision.
I think the parallel, and I'll get Mr. Grant to comment on this in a second, is whether we abandon our criminal justice system for fear of a wrongful conviction. We're humans, and we have imperfect human institutions, and there will be mistakes, no matter what we do. But most people would say that we still need a criminal justice system. Then we work progressively to improve its accuracy.
What I understand we're doing by looking at things like biometrics is improving the accuracy of our decisions so that we are, in fact, going to be detaining the right people. We will still detain people who ought ultimately not to have been detained, but that's the price for having the refugee system, isn't it?
I looked back at your comments in April when you were discussing Bill C-31. You said that you were concerned about the characterization of refugees and that the Canadian people may develop an increasingly negative perception of refugees. Wouldn't it be true that they would be even more negative if we didn't have security provisions in place to give them confidence that we can continue our refugee program?
Could you comment on that?