Okay, he is not sharing his time.
First of all, Mr. Uppal, thank you. I have always viewed you to be a reasonable parliamentarian. I have a lot of respect for you, and I enjoy our conversations.
The reality is that I became aware of this issue around the beginning of spring, not at the end of last year. When I first became aware of this, it was as a result of media reports that claimed there were 700 international students who were impacted by this. I wanted to verify the veracity of that reporting. It turns out that it was not an accurate reflection of what was going on.
It's really important when we're dealing with something as serious as a person's ability to remain in Canada that we know the facts we're dealing with, so we undertook a bit of work to understand what was actually going on. What we have determined—and I would differ, respectfully, with your assessment of a “shoot first, ask questions later” process—is that we're dealing with a cohort of people who have been referred to the IRB from CBSA, and there are now 57 individuals who have been subjected to a removal order. Understanding what was going on, after this process played out when people had an opportunity to adduce evidence, was very important. To the extent that I could communicate that we were working on a solution for people who were in fact genuine students, we tried to communicate online to demonstrate that we were working towards a solution.
To identify the right solution sometimes takes longer than people like—including me, on many occasions—but the reality is that I'm not just looking at the need to demonstrate compassion to those who I think should remain in Canada. We absolutely need to demonstrate compassion to those people who should remain in Canada, but we also need to protect the integrity of the system. When we're dealing with a widespread, potentially criminal element to people who are seeking to abuse Canada's immigration system, I start to think about the reputational risk to the international student program more broadly. This is an extraordinary program that brings people to our country who make an incredible difference.
Yes, we need to do what we can to protect the mental health and well-being of people who are going through this process, but we can't cut corners when it comes to developing a process that will ensure we protect the integrity of the system at the same time.