Well, no, I would not be open to scrapping our proposal to include some form of negative discretion, precisely because it seeks to deal with cases of individuals who are not otherwise inadmissible to Canada.
Let me begin by saying that I appreciate your generally constructive approach, Ms. Sims, and do hope that there will be a serious deliberative and legislative consideration of the bill. I regret that you characterize the government's willingness to amend immigration legislation in the past as “backtracking under pressure”. Perhaps it's just that we're actually open and flexible to improvements.
It was a radical idea that we could actually improve legislation through the deliberative process. That's certainly been I hope my hallmark as minister, and I hope it will be so on Bill C-43, which is why I have tabled with you these proposed guidelines.
Now, let me say that the committee may recommend that we codify these guidelines in the bill, or that they be codified in regulation. But you're going to have to understand that there are implications to that.
So why can't we—to respond to your question, first of all—just allow border officials to apply the inadmissibility law? Because very frequently...and, you said, to apply the law, for example, of inadmissibility against people who might commit hate crimes. There are no grounds upon which to deny entry to Canada of a foreign national who we believe may commit hate crimes in Canada if they are not otherwise inadmissible—that is to say, if they do not, for example, have a criminal record in their country of origin for crimes that would also be crimes in Canada.
Now, let's say they've committed fraud crimes in Germany or something. That's something the CBSA can consider. But going around in a foreign country—you can pick any number of countries—calling for the murder of gays or Jews or women is not a crime in many countries, and therefore does not constitute grounds for inadmissibility.