Let me be specific with the numbers on that question.
There are incidents that are recorded when border officers have difficulty at the border. One of the things that's very hard to pin down is the deterrent factor. For instance, most Canadians may not be aware that the rate now, in Canada, is that there are about 13,260 individuals in the private sector who have sidearms, working for security firms. Generally it's the armoured-car services. I want you to think about that for a minute. There are over 13,000 people, right now, with firearms, across Canada, protecting bags of coins, and they're walking into malls every day. They're walking on our streets. We see them. They pull up to high-rise buildings, they walk in there. It happens from time to time, but it's very rare. So the flip side of the question is: if they didn't have those firearms, what would be happening?
The question we face with the border officers is that we know there are times when in fact, because they don't have firearms, the wrong people are coming to the border. The wrong people are thinking they can get across the border. We know there are times when people get across the border from the United States, and they do harm. I'm not blaming Americans. I'm just saying the same thing happens, from time to time, that Canadians get across the border and do damage in the United States, kill people and do other things.
So the number of incidents that occur where there's some kind of physical interaction, if I can say that, they're rare because of the professionalism of the border officers. If you've been to--I'm sure you have--what they call the “secondary sites” where somebody is sent, they have to be both ambassadors and policing-type officers at the same time, because they're telling people.... They're asking them to get out of their car. They're saying we're going to search your car. And as I said, about two dozen times today, the person getting out of the car knows they have drugs in the car or the truck, and they know there's a chance that's going to be found. It's a very sensitive and dangerous situation.
So we have to weigh out the deterring effect. But in terms of number of incidents, it is rare. We of course hope that with firearms preventing people, there will be a message to the criminal and possibly the terrorist community. There will be a message that it's going to be difficult to get past a Canadian border officer.