Madam Speaker, I would like to make a preliminary comment. We are told that there are several Canadian criminals abroad, especially in Latin America, an area that I know quite well. There are Canadians in jail in Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica. Would you like them to be treated the way you want to treat foreigners in this country? I do not think so. However, what I observed in Latin America is that all Canadians are welcome. The fact that a small number of Canadians are occasionally involved in drug trafficking does not reflect on the way other Canadians are treated. People make a clear distinction between this small group and the vast majority of Canadians.
Here is my question: Yesterday, the hon. member, who is immigration and citizenship critic for the Reform Party, said that we must reduce immigration to solve this problem. By extrapolating this simplistic reasoning, we could say that if we did away completely with immigration we would no longer have any foreign criminals. However, it is impossible.
How do you explain that last year you were asking for a maximum of 250,000 immigrants, this year 200,000 and in the future even less? Considering that the birth rate is very low in Canada, what are you going to do? How are you going to cope with an aging population, a very serious situation in Canada and all industrialized countries? How are you going to fulfil Canada's international obligations in the area of political asylum? Canada signed a convention. Do you think that we can refuse to receive refugees in order to do away with immigration or criminality problems? How are you going to solve the problem? Are you going to keep on lowering the number of immigrants you accept, while the birth rate continues to go down? In the next century, our population will start to decrease if we no longer accept immigrants. How are you going to solve that problem?