Thank you for raising two other aspects of the bill, Mr. Weston.
First of all, under the current provisions of IRPA, someone who is found to have engaged in misrepresentation, in, for example, making an application to visit or immigrate to Canada, can be barred from applying for two years. We are proposing to raise that benchmark to five years because, as you likely know, fraud in the immigration program is a very serious problem.
One of the reasons in some parts of the world we have a fairly high rejection rate for temporary resident visas, for example, is because of the number of fraudulent applications that are often submitted by unscrupulous or crooked immigration agents operating abroad. There is an entire industry, as we know, that will produce, as I pointed out before, everything from fake bank transcripts to fake flight itineraries to fake death certificates or wedding certificates—fake just about everything. It's that industry that really creates serious problems for the efficient administration of our immigration laws and for legitimate, bona fide visitors who want to come here.
We need to send a clear message to people here and abroad that if you are going to commit fraud in an application, there will be serious consequences. You won't be able to apply to come back for five years. This is not going to apply to people who just make a mistake, a good faith error, who forget to enclose a document or make a minor error. It's for those who clearly have the intent to misrepresent. This is why we've increased the penalty.
With respect to compelling people to attend a CSIS interview, I'd like to invite Public Safety perhaps to supplement that.