Mr. Speaker, after listening to that intervention I am reminded of the questions at hand. Do we really believe in immigration? Do we think it is an integral part of domestic and foreign policy for our country? Do we have the proper approaches to address immigration as an issue?
The member opposite talked in generic, general and wide conceptual terms about the importance of immigration and how countries can deal with it. Essentially it is divided into two. Either we think of it as a problem on an international basis and invest a lot of resources domestically and in foreign development, or we receive people here out of generosity and other good, valuable and altruistic reasons.
I do not think that is what the bill is addressing. That is a debate for another time, perhaps in this place or another place. The issue in this bill is how we make the procedures once a decision has been made to open our doors to others. Presumably we have done that. Statistically, we have been relatively generous in keeping our doors open.
In part it is a self-serving generosity. Today's headlines in some of the newspapers indicate that we are approaching a shortage of one million skilled workers. Where do we go? Where do we get them? We will raid other countries that have such skilled labourers because domestically we have not been able to address that. However, when we do that raiding, when we invite people to come to make a contribution and play a role in our country, then we have a particular procedure and a process whereby these people are qualified.
The intent of the bill is designed to address that. I have not heard that from members of the opposition. I want to ask a very specific question of my colleague opposite. Will he address the issue of criminality? Nobody but nobody that I know of wants to deal with criminals in the country. We do not want them here. No one wants them anywhere.
One of the definitions of criminality and illegality is that people try to evade and avoid supervision and the vigilance of authorities that are legitimate. In other words, they are underground all the time and look for ways to circumvent the system.
One of the things that we do in this country, which I am a little embarrassed by and maybe the member can address it, is invite families to come to Canada. They bring their very young children and their newborns. If we think in terms of what we define as children and how we address them, most of these children are between the ages of seven to fourteen.
These children grow up in our environment. They do not become citizens for one reason or another. However, when they get into their late teens or early twenties and fall afoul of the law, they find themselves in jail. As soon as they have served their time and paid their dues, the first people they meet when they come out jail are the enforcement officials for the RCMP. Then they are shipped off to wherever they came from.
The member opposite has been so eloquent in his concept of global justice, human rights and rights of individuals anywhere and everywhere. How he would address that particular problem? It is a lot more common in Canada than we would care to admit. We are exporting criminals that we have trained. Could the member address that in a very specific way?