Mr. Speaker, what a pleasure it is to hear reasoned debate from my colleague. I want to thank him for taking the opportunity to point out many of the same points that were pointed out earlier. I was glad that the government was actually listening instead of heckling. I hope that the message is getting through.
When there is a problem with the system it is our job as opposition members to point out the problems to the government so that it will take action to address the problems. That is exactly what my colleague was pointing out.
I want to ask my colleague this question. He talked about citizenship of convenience and people buying their way into the country. I want to make him aware of a comment made by a CIC official. This is a person who works within the immigration department who says that he believes that part of the business entrepreneur category of citizenship is a way for people to buy their way into the country.
Mr. Coolen noted that this program “assists and promotes citizenship of convenience fraud, promotes abuse in national and provincial social programs and in my opinion is a national disgrace”. Later the same person working for immigration said “The program has never been audited since its inception in 1978. Any claims of investment or job creation are suspect and not reliable due to faulty methods of collection and the lack of any quality control”.
This is another example of an abuse of the system. I would not mind hearing my colleague's comments on this example of fraud as one which he mentioned earlier.