Mr. Brouwer, to take it in the broad context, Canada is renowned for its generous immigration and refugee policies. Those generous policies rely upon continued goodwill from the general populace. For people who are elected to enact and preserve laws, we have to have some commitment to those things. To me, the most humanitarian and considerate thing we can do as lawmakers is to ensure that we continue a generous open door to refugees. We have people who have been admissible on the most serious grounds, war criminals, human rights violators, people whose examples we heard cited earlier before you started your testimony today. Some of them are organized criminals and they've been able to delay their deportation for years and years. We've heard it costs millions of dollars. My concern is that we'll lose the popular support of the whole refugee program if we allow such people. Furthermore, people who are parents, like me, average Canadians, want to know that serious criminals are being deported, especially if they're not Canadians.
I would have thought you would be coming here complimenting the government on Bill C-43, saying this is what we need to make sure that 10 years, 20 years, or 50 years hence, the people who follow in our footsteps are similarly defending a generous refugee system.