Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this matter. We were talking about the age of cars. Under the Liberal government we cannot really afford Porsches. It reminds me of the Cuban situation where they are driving 1957 Plymouths and so on.
We are dealing with a new type of war against a new, different and formidable enemy. There is no doubt that the enemy is eminently evil. Where should we be going at this stage with this type of war?
Much has been said over the last month and quite frankly a war of words will not win the war. This war will be won by action.
The Progressive Conservative Party understands the need for Canada to co-ordinate this war of action. We do not have the luxury in this war of having departments build their own little empires, barriers and not co-operating.
I heard no end of answers during the last session when we were talking about the Amodeo situation where departments were passing the buck. We cannot afford that. Departments have to work and co-operate, and the gist of the motion is to get everybody working on the same plan and strategy.
However, as soon as I read the intent of the motion I had problems with it because it seems the war involves just about every department of government. Can we ignore the area of immigration and refugees? We have approximately 26,000 people in Canada who are not supposed to be here and are subject to deportation orders. The government does not have the resources to know where they are or how to even track them down and get them out of the country. It is a serious matter.
We have heard about the Ressam situation. It is a very disturbing scenario. We knew he was a dangerous terrorist who was in our country. We decided we could not send him back to his home nation of Algeria because the Canadian way looked at the Algerian legal system and concluded it would not be compassionate. It would not be the Liberal way of dealing with somebody to send a dangerous person back to the country that should be dealing with him.
There is another important area. We are dealing with dangerous people in the war on terrorism. We need a strong and powerful intelligence agency in the country that has the tools and equipment to deal with it. That involves the solicitor general's branch.
Transportation has been the first target of the terrorists either directly or as a means of bringing about terror. How can we keep transportation out of the discussion?
We could refer to a lot of departments. The justice department deals with criminal law. We are talking about an omnibus bill brought forward by the justice minister to deal with acts of terrorism. The more one thinks about it, the more we are talking about every branch of government.
One would think that there are no barriers between government departments in the war on terrorism. However I am quite sure there are many. The Senate had a look at the whole area of terrorism in 1989. It found numerous examples of government departments working at odds with one another.
These obstacles must be eliminated. The barriers must be knocked down. One example is that CSIS had its own legislative definition of a security risk. The immigration department has another definition. Other departments have other definitions. This must stop.
If we brought together all the committees of the House to deal with the matter we would be bringing 301 MPs into the House of Commons to deal with it on an ongoing basis. The motion underscores something that is becoming obvious to me: We need a new special minister whose job is solely to co-ordinate the war on terrorism.
In all fairness, in the war against terrorism a lot of us must set aside our partisan ideology and points of view. There is a report that says the Bruce nuclear reactor does not comply with recognized international safety standards. My reading of the report suggests the reactor is way off the mark. Does that mean we should privatize the existing system as an alternative to public ownership of the Bruce nuclear reactor? Nonsense, that is not the problem. The challenge is to put in a good system and good management and make sure we get the results we want.
We have 26,000 people in the country who should not be here. Many of them are dangerous. They are the product of a poor immigration and refugee system. Should we privatize the immigration system because it has all these flaws?
I am raising these points because I have heard people from other parties suggest that the problems we have at airports are because we have private security people there. They say that making them all public servants would be the solution. That is not the solution. We need quality programs with good management and then we will get the results we want.
Another requirement in the war on terrorism is the need for resources. It is truly shameful to look at the results of years of neglect by the government in terms of our military, our immigration and refugee system and our intelligence community. It is an embarrassment for Canadians to be sending Sea Kings and other military relics into the combat zone. It is shameful that we only have about 250 or 260 special forces people trained to deal with hijacking and terrorist activities. It is even more shameful that a lot of them will be leaving Canada when they are badly needed at home.
To provide the resources without going back into a deficit situation, something I do not think most members want, the government will have to start looking at some of its sacred cows, programs that have limited benefits but use a lot of money. I will quickly list some of these.
First, we have spent $600 million on a gun registration system whose benefits are still arguable. We will spend another $100 million a year to administer the program once it is finally set up.
Second, there are mountains of interest groups who collect money from the government. We went through that last week with one of the ministers and the embarrassment that resulted from that.
Third, HRDC and the Department of Industry still believe welfare capitalism is the way to make the economy grow.
A lot of these sacred cows will have to be put to the side and the funds will have to be used for national security where they are needed.