Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's response to the content of the bill. I will address my next question to one of his concern about the bill and not the Alliance amendment. The Alliance amendment basically deals with security matters.
In the member's comments he made reference to the movement of manufactured goods between Canada and the United States. I have had the opportunity, as have other members in the House, to examine how goods actually move through the Canadian side to the American side of the border and vice versa. The Americans have stepped forward with some very state of the art detection equipment where they no longer need to tear everything apart inside a container or a truck to see what is in it. They have a device that can x-ray the truck to determine if it contains people, goods or other questionable goods, such as drugs.
When I was last at the border it was with the member for Wild Rose. We were very much aware that one in twenty trucks would be checked at the border but when the line-up became too long some would not be checked at all. They would just drive around checkpoints and away they would go. There were times when the police would chase one or two of these units but needless to say many got away without any check.
With the situation as it is today, with border security tightening up, it is not necessarily tightening up for manufactured goods going back and forth but for the threat of the wrong kind of people coming through the border points. They may slip south or they may slip north. If we do not deal with the security side of the matter our manufacturing side may get hurt too because of long line-ups and the demand from our friends to the south for restricting that movement until everything is checked to their satisfaction.
What should Canada do that would assist or augment what exists presently in developing a better security arrangement to move manufactured goods through that border point?