Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join in the debate on Bill C-26.
The first thing I would like to do is acknowledge the hard work and tenacity around this issue that both our colleagues from Windsor—Tecumseh and Windsor West have focused on this. It is a huge issue for Windsor. It is not, like many in the House, a broader issue. This is Windsor's back yard.
I will mention the border delays. If members have had a chance to go to Windsor and be brought to the border by either of the two members I have just mentioned, they saw how backed up the trucks are from the bridges, many kilometres back from the actual border. This happens on a regular basis.
What is disappointing but interesting is that there are so many trucks it is affecting the small businesses that are on each side of those main arterial roads in the city of Windsor for the simple reason that people cannot turn off the main arterial road into the parking lots of these small businesses. They are literally being strangled by virtue of the fact that their customers physically cannot get to them.
This whole issue of what is happening at our border crossings has all kinds of permutations. It is important to note that Bill C-26 is not a small bill. I point to the fact that it is close to 100 pages long and contains 147 clauses, which is a lot to consider.
I heard my colleague from the Conservative Party, the member for Central Nova, talk about the fact that he felt this should be a non-partisan debate. That is fair and I accept that. We will try to gear to that, but nonetheless there are some elements in here that have to be acknowledged, such as what the status was of border crossings under the government. We must remember that it has been the government for 10 years. What was the status we found when we actually looked at it? In other words, we are fixing something, but we need to remember who broke it or did not take the time to think ahead.
The is about the future and about moving forward. However I want to bring to the fore the fact that it was the Auditor General--and I do not know what we pay the Auditor General but it is not nearly enough--who did an audit and determined a number of things. First, she found that watch lists that are used to screen visa applicants, refugee claimants and travellers seeking entry to Canada were not consistently accurate and up to date.
My friend from the Bloc just finished commenting on the concerns that she and her caucus colleagues had around some of the immigration ministry authority and powers moving over to this new entity and what that might mean to new Canadians or refugees or those who are seeking to make Canada their new home. I point to what the Auditor General found out, which is that it can cut both ways. We can have someone, who ought not be coming in, getting in because the proper information is not going where it needs to go, or, if there is an error, not that computers ever make mistakes, but in that rare moment when there is a computer mistake, and I say that very tongue in cheek, the fact that this needs to be kept up to date was found to be inadequate by the Auditor General.
It sounds like a little thing but when it is someone's life, someone's family or someone's kids who are being denied entry simply because information is either not up to date or inaccurate, that is a big deal. The Auditor General found that problem going into this.
She also found that 25,000 Canadian passports were lost or stolen each year and the information about those passports was not being made available to the front line officers. She acknowledges that those passports could be used by people who have unlawful purposes in wanting to be in Canada. However, from a common sense point of view, one would think that there would already be a system in place to make sure that if a passport, one of the most important documents in the entire nation, is lost or stolen, the information about that passport would be forwarded to the front line people we look to as being our first line of defence in terms of making sure that only those who we want in this country are getting into the country.
The Auditor General found that and that is obviously something that Bill C-26 is attempting to correct. I do not in any way want to leave any impression that it is a bad bill, but I do want to point out how we got here and what some of the problems were that we are collectively trying to solve with Bill C-26.
The last thing the Auditor General mentioned, and these are just the big pieces, was that Transport Canada was not being given access to criminal intelligence that the RCMP had when doing the screening for employees who would be working in secure areas in an airport or indeed actually having access to aircraft themselves.
I hear my colleagues murmuring around me. It is surprising to hear that kind of information and obviously it has to be treated right. By no means are we suggesting that our privacy laws should not be upheld, but by the same token it just makes sense that if there is important intelligence that the RCMP has, that there be a means to make sure that the front line people who are hiring those who are going into secure areas and will have access are people who should be given those kinds of clearances and have that kind of a security level.
Those were areas that our Auditor General found problematic and wanting, particularly in the events following September 11, and that is how we got to this point today where all of this is here.
To take in the enormity of what we are trying to achieve takes a lot of work. There are all the issues that every one of us has raised so far. In its totality, we must understand that we are talking about goods valued at $1.9 billion and 300,000 people crossing our borders every day. We could spend a lot of time, which we have and I hope members will at committee, talking about the security side of things, but I would hope that we recognize, and these are the issues that our colleagues from Windsor are bringing up all the time, that security and safety obviously are paramount but that we have to do this in a way that is intelligent and efficient so that we are not disrupting the critical flow of goods and people back and forth on our borders with the U.S.
Being from Hamilton and representing downtown Hamilton, certainly in terms of the steel industry, we talk a lot about just in time delivery. If we were to talk to anybody who lives near a border city, they would tell us the nightmares that a lot of manufacturers are going through because they have things timed in such a way. For instance, we did a tour recently of the transmission plant at General Motors in Windsor. I would urge any member who has an opportunity to take it because there is a lot there to be learned. One of the things they talked about was that transmissions built there in the morning could easily find themselves installed in a newly assembled vehicle in the United States by the end of the day. It is hard to make that system work if the equipment is sitting in a truck 20 kilometres from the border where it has been sitting for four hours, and the driver has no idea of when it will get to where it is going.
I cannot say this enough, because I would not want anyone to think that we are not taking security seriously, believe me we are, as every member of the House does. However there does have to be that balance where we have the ability to efficiently move goods and people across the border. That will take training, new technologies and new systems of dealing with the processing of goods and people. It will take a lot of work and a lot of thought but we need to do it. It is imperative, both for our security and for our economy.
If the parliamentary secretary is planning to comment, which he may or may not, but if he does, I hope he acknowledges that the government is embracing the notion that they have to deal with both sides of this equally and that both are important, and that if either side fails then collectively we have let our country down. It is just that important.
The member from Newfoundland spoke about the staff, the front line people. I want to underscore, on behalf of our caucus, that message because it is critical. As we all know, we can have the greatest plans, policies, ideas, goals and lofty ideals in the world, but without the people on the front line who will make it happen, it is really just words and hot air. If we stand back and acknowledge how important it is and how difficult it will be, we had better appreciate the people on the front line. They need the numbers, the training and adequate equipment to do their jobs.
It is not the easiest job in the world. Although not exactly the same, to some degree I would liken it somewhat to officers pulling cars over on the highway. They are never a 100% sure what they will find when they walk up to that car. Border crossing staff, support staff and others, all who are employed, never know what they will face. Given some of the dynamics in our world at this time, we have to be cognizant of their needs as citizens, as employees of the government and as protectors of our border. They need to be treated with the respect and importance they deserve. If it takes funding to ensure that the training, numbers and equipment are there, then that money bloody well better be there. It is just that important.
Last, in acknowledging that we will support the bill going to committee, as we can see from the comments made by not only me on behalf of our NDP caucus, but also other colleagues, there is a lot of work to be done. The bill could be perfect, but I doubt it. I do not think I have ever seen a perfect bill. Therefore, there is always work to be done.
Given the importance in some of the areas, which will not be easy to work out, I hope the committee has the opportunity to dig into these things in a meaningful way, simply because of its overall importance.
I would like to caution the government a little. It is my understanding that the agency has been up and running for about a year and we are doing the paper work after the fact. I have spent 13 years in majority government situations at the provincial level, and have sat on both sides of the House. I know that when a bill is introduced in the first year of a four year majority government, there is a fairly high degree of certainty that it will become the law simply because with a good healthy majority government bills do not lose. Things can happen sometimes. This may indeed be one of those. I do not know. It obviously predates the last election.
However, the government that it needs to be careful. In a minority situation, it could easily find out, having gone stampeding out through the gate and setting something up, starting to pull pieces into place, spending money, hiring people, doing studies and all these things, at the end of the day the majority of the House might not agree with the government. Since the government does not control the majority, the only thing that is lawful is what Parliament says is lawful. Therefore, I would add that cautionary note for the government.
This predated the election, although I do not know if we want to make a big deal about that. However, it is worth at least pointing out that in a minority situation, as we are all going through these new untested, uncharted waters to some degree in the modern era, the government ought not get too far ahead of itself. It should remember that it is in a very different dynamic than it has been for the past decade.
Let us ensure we get the horse in front of the cart, pass the legislation and then take the action, not the other way around.