Mr. Chair, certainly I can assure the hon. member that the government will be making a forceful intervention on this initiative before October 31. I hope the hon. member will be making his own because I certainly will be as well.
It is a foregone conclusion that this subject will be on the agenda of the Prime Minister and Condoleezza Rice this evening or tomorrow. There is no question about it. The fact that this debate was scheduled for tonight, the natural follow through would be that this would happen.
On the matter of obtaining the travel documents, if they are necessary, and again, my first position is not to have this requirement whatsoever, I have met with American congressmen and senators from other parts of the United States but not the border states. The senators, congressmen and governors of the border states are all opposed to this, but as we go further south into the United States they are of a different ilk and they feel otherwise and are more concerned with security than the economic benefits to either of our countries.
I think reasonable alternatives should be considered. When I said that the card should be simple to obtain, we all know that the NEXUS and Smart border program take a little time. Our citizens would need these cards, if it is in fact implemented, as quickly as possible.
It does not mean that we are going to sacrifice the security requirements and the information that goes into it, but we could obtain them from a postal outlet as opposed to having to go to the border to pick up an application. We should make it easy, make it accessible for our citizens and make it inexpensive.
As we know it costs $85 for a passport now and a NEXUS card costs roughly $50. If one has a family one wants an application with a fee of perhaps $10 which would simply cover the cost of processing or even perhaps a little less to keep it going.
The member had many other questions I believe but those were the highlights that I wish to respond to.