Madam Speaker, the member is too kind in his comments but, believe me, I always appreciate that.
In terms of accountability, when the minister referred to the three or four million people who supported the Canadian Alliance as racists, bigots and Holocaust deniers, she lost her credibility, and it is clear that she should not be in this position.
In terms of the system, the auditor general made some interesting comments less than a year ago in his report on the immigration system. He made a lot of statements that were profound, but I will quote from one. He said:
On the whole, we are very concerned about the Department's ability to ensure compliance with legislative requirements in this area. We noted serious deficiencies in the way it applies admissibility criteria related to health, criminality and security. It is somewhat disappointing to note the limited progress it has made since our 1990 Report.
The auditor general made almost an identical report in many areas back in 1990 and he noted in his 2000 report that many of the same problems are still there.
The accountability is not there in legislation, it is not there in practice and it is not there in the way the department administers it. It is one my biggest concerns. Even if it were a good piece of legislation, if the administration does not improve and if the accountability does not improve then our immigration system will not be any better. That answers the first question.
In terms of abuse of the system, it was interesting to hear an NDP member refer earlier to the roughly 6,000 people who came from China by boat the summer before last. She said they were economic refugees, that they had come here to better their situation. If they wanted to come as economic immigrants they should have come through our immigration system, but she seemed to think it was fine that they came claiming to be refugees when they clearly were not.
The UN convention definition of a refugee says clearly that someone coming to improve his or her economic situation is not a refugee. I was shocked to hear the member's statement. If a person comes here claiming to be a refugee he or she should be a refugee as laid out in the UN convention. Canada has expanded that quite broadly.
These people did not fall under any definition and the member seemed to think that was fine. I have a huge problem with that. I call that abuse of the system.
To the third question on the loopholes in our foreign offices and so on, there was a document leaked to me about a year ago when I was immigration critic that made it very clear that there were many problems in our foreign offices that have to be dealt with, and the auditor general agreed.