Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the intervention but the witness who made that comment was the government witness. Also according to the newspaper article by Greg Weston, which I am assuming is correct, he said that if we gave diplomatic privileges and immunities for a meeting, then all the participants that we let in for that meeting would get it.
This is different from the minister of immigration looking at an individual application and saying that this person does not qualify or that this is a person we do not want to have in Canada who has diplomatic immunity from our civil and criminal laws.
What this foreign official has said is that if one gets in, they all get in. That does not sound to me like the Department of Foreign Affairs, according to this foreign affairs official, will analyze individual applications as in the past when a minister issued a special ministerial permit. This is almost blanket coverage, according to this foreign affairs official who was quoted in the paper. If anybody is allowed into these meetings, then everybody in the delegation will be allowed in and that is my concern.
I do not believe that I am exaggerating or that any other aspect of my comments was not realistic or practical.