Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the minister for appearing before our committee.
He just said in his comments that globally there is a crisis with people who are faced with displacement and are forcibly displaced in their country of origin. Canada's geography is such that we are actually quite sheltered from the impact of that. The one exception, of course, would be the U.S. border, hence the safe third country agreement.
Given the numbers relative to the rest of the globe in the face of this crisis, Canada is not as impacted as some of the other countries are by literally millions of people crossing over to seek safety, yet Canada has chosen to put a safe third country agreement in place, even though the minister admitted that people try to seek safety not because it's fun, but because they really need to do so. They enter into this perilous journey to get to safety.
The safe third country agreement puts them into this dangerous situation. It subjects them to exploitation, to smugglers and to other dangers as they are making this journey, whether they be weather-related or otherwise. Why not do away with the safe third country agreement so that people are not subjected to that, and then allow them to actually make their claims through a regular entry?