Mr. Speaker, I always have the sense that when the parliamentary secretary asks those questions, he is asking me to do the job of the government. We are used to carrying a heavy burden for the government since it seems to have difficulty in getting things done, but I will respond.
The Waco agreement is an agreement in fairly general terms. It does make reference to all three governments, Canada, Mexico and the United States, and how they should deal with problems of documentation and facilitating border crossing by their respective citizens. Unfortunately, that agreement does not have the status of a treaty. It would be up against very specific legislation in the United States.
It is another bit in our arsenal to convince the U.S. senate and house of representatives that they should repeal or at the very least, delay the legislation, but it is nothing more than that. The agreement is not binding on the United States. It is not binding on us or on Mexico to the degree that we would have to follow through with legislation. At best, it has moral suasion on the United States. I suppose we can use it for that purpose.
My sense is that the practical arguments that I raised in my opening address are much stronger, both in terms of the negative impact on the economy and just the practicality that we cannot produce the passports. We cannot produce an alternative document because the technology is not there, nor do we have the efficiencies within our system to produce that many passports in the period of time we would have to.
The final point I would make in terms of relying on the agreement is that we have seen so many times, and this was one of the points the parliamentary secretary was making, especially with this administration that when it appears to have made commitments at the international level and when those commitments clash with what it sees as its self-interest, it unilaterally rejects and repudiates agreements. We cannot rely very heavily on this administration following through. The practical arguments make much more sense in convincing it.