Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I just want to quickly review this.
We have a human smuggler who pleaded guilty to smuggling someone from the U.S. into Canada in 2021, who was out on bail conditions, which means that he had an ankle bracelet. He was living at home, which is a whole other issue with the “bail not jail” system that we have in our country. However, one of his conditions was to surrender his passport and not be able to get a new one, and so he did that. The RCMP took his passport.
Obviously, when you're a human smuggler, you don't smuggle just one person, so the RCMP continued to investigate this person, and when they searched his home again, they found that he had a new passport. That's the subject of this motion that we're making today, because this is a huge failure on behalf of the NDP-Liberal government to keep Canadians safe. We have a criminal who was on conditions, was wearing an ankle bracelet, was actually told that he could not have a passport and was issued a passport by the government anyway.
It really makes me question the integrity of our passport system and our ability to contain criminals who are on conditional sentences. It gets even worse because the same man, about 15 years ago, actually spent time in jail because he showed up at Canada's border with two passports in his hands that were not even in his name, so this man had a long history of abusing passports.
It makes me wonder how Service Canada actually looks at applications when they come in. They have to fill out a form. Is it all on the honour system? Apparently, there is a database where where they are able to know if people have committed crimes, but I'm just wondering what kind of database this is. Are we talking about yellow sticky notes on the wall that remind people? How does this work exactly?
I think it's important to have this study because we really need to know how the system is working and how the government could possibly have let this happen. As well, how does it deal with criminals, and how does it interact with the court system and with the criminal system to know who's who and who is able to have a passport or not have a passport?
On Wednesday, Minister Miller did say that he would verify the story and that he'd be happy to report back to the House. I think that coming to this committee and speaking to this motion at committee would be a great way for him to report back to the House. That's why I am in support of this motion, and I hope that everybody will also support this motion.
Thank you.