I agree with you that it's not going to really deter people who are trying to run guns or bring drugs through our borders, and we need to deal with that. But if there is an alert, surely the response would be to advise law enforcement people, people who have....
I have great confidence in the officers in the Canada Border Services Agency and that if, over time and at great expense, they are trained...but let's face it, training is one thing, experience is another. The RCMP and other law enforcement agencies have many years of experience in how to interdict at the proper time and to minimize the risk to innocent bystanders.
A border crossing is a place where there are many people. It seems to me the best place to interdict would be based on some reasonable and intelligent choices, which law enforcement people with great experience could make, in a place where innocent bystanders wouldn't be at risk.
To Mr. Fracassi, how can it be, sir, that in so many of the incidents, or in the vast majority of cases where there was an assessment done by your department when the union chose to leave their post, you concluded--in an objective way, I presume--that there really wasn't a risk to the officer's safety; whereas this study by Northgate, which was commissioned by the union...? If one were cynical, one could say that it lacked, perhaps, objectivity. But even taking away the cynicism, how can you explain how different groups could arrive at such different conclusions?