Mr. Speaker, I listened with rapt attention to the interventions by my hon. colleague from Kings--Hants on this important legislation. I certainly find myself agreeing with most of the points he raised in opposing the bill and, in particular, the issue he raised about this timeframe of 45 days whereby the cabinet of government, perhaps even the Prime Minister, might be kept in the dark about issues that certainly should be brought to their attention and should have more support than simply one cabinet minister.
As he correctly pointed out, there have been a number of occasions where decisions made by cabinet ministers, in particular the Minister of National Defence, have caused great concern regarding their judgment and whether they passed information on to appropriate colleagues and indeed to the Prime Minister. When Canadians have seen that in the past, they should be very concerned about giving those ministers, those types of individuals, greater power under this bill.
One of the things that concerns me about Bill C-55 is that in some areas I think the government, as usual, goes too far and in other areas it does not go far enough.
One example that comes to mind is in the area of properly screening individuals who enter our country. I would suggest that in many cases the ones who intend to sneak into the country have bogus documents. They get on the airplane, land here and somehow en route the documents go missing. Yet in this legislation there is no provision to immediately deport those individuals out of the country. Instead, once they land here they have all the rights and privileges of citizens. The charter kicks in and we are stuck with them. In many cases they are not detained, they go underground, go missing, sneak into the United States or whatever.
In the limited time left for questions and comments, I wonder if the hon. member would like to address that particular area of concern. I know it is of great concern to Canadians, especially since 9/11.