It will not be an issue. Mexico has negotiated with the alliance about the movement of people, so there is room to negotiate and trade on things that have been accomplished.
On the movement of people, let me quickly go to a couple of issues. There are two issues with the movement of people that always come up in Canada. One is that if we do anything in terms of letting people into North America, we run into issues with the Americans. The other is security concerns.
On issues with the United States, the history is instructive. Early on the government tried to lift visas on central Europeans. The bureaucrats and policy community in Ottawa said it couldn't be done. The Prime Minister went to Washington, and I'm told by friends in D.C. that he raised the issue in a conversation with George Bush. The response by the U.S. President was, “Well, Stephen, I think that's a great idea. You should go ahead and do it. It would make things easier for us in the States.” This was a completely different message from the one he got in Washington. We lifted the visas. The U.S. didn't complain. Obviously, there were issues later with refugees, but we've since dealt with them.
With regard to Mexico, the government was told the only way to stem abuses of the refugee system was to impose visas. A bunch of us said, “No, there are alternatives.” People in Mexico said, “No, there are alternatives.” You can take the 30 million Mexicans who already have 10-year U.S. visas and let them come to Canada. Mexico does it. Other countries do it. It would obviate it or avoid the problems on the political side in Mexico, and it would also avoid the economic problems in Quebec from the damage to the tourism industry and people moving over. So we can do a lot more visas than we're told.
On security, the chart shows homicide rates per 100,000 from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. You can see that in terms of the crime issue, we're really not looking at much on the alliance. Or you can look at the capitals of the alliance and Canada and homicide rates, and you can see that if Washington, D.C., were tossed in, how the countries in the alliance would fall. This data also comes from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
The interesting issue on the crime and security front is that we already have visa-free travel with countries that have worse crime and security issues than those in the alliance. If you take a look at this data, this comes from The Atlantic; they run some numbers. Looking at homicide by firearm—this is different from overall homicide rates—of Pacific Alliance countries versus cities in the U.S. , if you're worried about visa-free travel with the alliance, don't go to Miami., stay out of Portland, and whatever you do, don't cross the border into Buffalo.
The real issue for Canada is that we have visa-free travel with Detroit. In terms of a danger to Canada from visa-free travel, I can't think of anything worse than a second bridge between Windsor and Detroit. You have a city with a homicide rate.... That's the firearm homicide rate, but the actual homicide rate is 55 per 100,000. You have a city where on any corner you can buy an AK-47 with a high-capacity magazine clip, and our response to this clear and present security threat to Canadians is to build a second bridge.
The security issues are overplayed. If you're coming from the alliance, you're going to have to.... You've been to Bogotá. You pass through three levels of security going through the airport, two more levels than you need to get into Canada. The thought that this is going to lead to security problems in Canada, compared to what we already face, is.... When you actually look at the facts, when you look at reality instead of perception, it's not an issue. It's moving qualified business people.
In this country we haven't managed to implement the APEC visa. Twenty-one countries, the economies in the Asia-Pacific economic group, have implemented the visa. We haven't. This is an issue we have to move on.