Mr. Speaker, it will not work. The Americans will not recognize that. If someone has a criminal record and is pardoned in this country, they will not recognize that. They have already decided they will not do that.
The other reality is that the card does not protect someone from informal racial profiling.
I rose in the House on a number of occasions and challenged the Minister of Foreign Affairs to deal with this issue, to complain to the Americans, to protest, because of the humiliation and the abuse that was occurring at the border, particularly to people of Arab and Muslim backgrounds. I was brushed off most of the time by the minister.
The reality finally got through to the U.S. and it has backed off in the formal programs, but informal discrimination and racial profiling is going on.
One of my constituents, a very fair featured woman with black hair, a citizen of Canada for 12 years and a resident for about 16 years, was constantly being stopped at the border as she went back and forth every day to work in the United States. She could not figure out why. Finally she realized it was because she still had a Middle Eastern accent. That is how they were identifying her. One day she happened to be wearing a crucifix, because she is Christian not Muslim, and she was not stopped that day. From then on she wore a crucifix when she went across the border.
Is that what we will have to do? That is the alternative to the card if we are to really try and deal with it. That is what is happening at the border and the card will not change that one iota.