Mr. Speaker, I suspect the member for Central Nova is the critic on this file. I look forward to working with him and his colleagues. I am sure the minister is as well.
The language of perimeter has a certain cachet that needs more debate but certainly what we are trying to do is cooperate and facilitate the movement of people and goods across our border with the United States.
One of the elements I did not mention was the container security announcement we made. We are helping the United States to inspect containers outside of Canada when they are loaded so that if a container arrives in Canada or the United States that contains some volatile weapons or whatever, that they do not even reach our shores. That is the kind of cooperation.
We are also implementing what is called the IBET, integrated border enforcement teams. This is the 20th or so integrated border enforcement team where we work closely with the American police officers and public safety people. We are working on sharing and having interoperability of radio communications so that we can act collectively. With that we have to respect our sovereignty and the U.S. does respect that, but there are so many ways that we can work together and we are working together because we have the same objective. We want safe, secure borders and we want our goods and people to move with relative ease.
Perimeter is another question. I think it raises a host of other issues around totally harmonized policies. Frankly, everyone will have a different view of that. It is something that needs to be debated in the House but my own judgment is that there should be limits to that in the sense that we need to have a sovereign immigration policy. We need a sovereign policy with respect to firearms. We need to have sovereign policies with respect to a number of other issues.
Having said that, we can certainly participate and cooperate with the Americans, which we are, and any anti-American comments are not helpful at all. We have an amazing neighbour with whom we have a great partnership. Last evening at the reception with Secretary Ridge, I was talking to the U.S. ambassador. While the Americans certainly do not like the comments, they discount some of them. Whatever little amount there is of it and whatever the source, I do not think it is helpful at all.