Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This is really a question that should be directed to Mr. Day, but I'm going to throw it out to the witnesses if you have any answers.
Mr. Bourduas, you said--and I think we'd all agree--that arming the border guards won't reduce the number of people who want to run guns or drugs across our borders. The deterrent effect will be minimal, at best, and I think these are serious problems. As Mr. Jolicoeur and others well know, the government did have different options apart from arming the border guards; this government chose to go with this particular option, but if the deterrence effect is minimal or zero and the people at the border, as Mr. Jolicoeur has said, will not be asked to interdict, apart from the border people having guns and being reclassified--I think Mr. Jolicoeur said he was going to put them in with his own scheme--there's an implicit cost somewhere within that classification scheme, because if you're carrying a gun, you're going to be entitled to more pay. Whether it's a new scheme or otherwise, there is an actual cost to that.
I don't know what the benefit is whatsoever of arming the guards. If it's going to result in the border people not withdrawing their services less, and if that seems to be the only benefit coming out of this, it's a very high cost to pay for that kind of benefit. I don't know; has any cost-benefit study been done on this?
Second, I'd like to come back to my colleague's question about summer students. Will they be armed as well?