Mr. Chair, I paid a great deal of attention to the comments of the member for Thunder Bay--Rainy River. He said among other things that mayors have taken initiatives on this. I know that he has been very involved with municipal politics and certainly we on this side of the House applaud that. We are happy when we hear that mayors are taking initiatives.
He also said that we have to take a page from one of the programs on the southern border of the United States, with Mexico, in terms of encouraging Americans, but let me ask the member this: how much encouragement can we give when we know that more has to be done at the border?
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety said he has not heard any questions being asked about this. I will tell him to check Hansard , because I certainly asked his minister a question as to what was being done about the unscheduled labour disruptions that were taking place at the border.
I pointed out to the minister at that time that four disruptions had taken place just this past summer. Border guards walked off the job because of security concerns and shut down the border. I asked the minister if we were going to have to wait until there were 40 of these shutdowns before the government would take action on this.
I challenged her then, but I have to raise the matter again because the same thing happened today. At 2 o'clock at the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie, border guards walked off the job. The parliamentary secretary will be aware of this because he must get intelligence briefings from across the country. As we speak, the traffic is backed up for miles. People cannot get into Canada.
Who should be doing something about this? Should we tell the mayors to get together and figure this out? Should we say that this is a tourism issue and we should advertise better?
It seems to me that we need leadership to settle some of these issues to make the borders work better. If members do not believe me or if they think the borders are working well, I challenge anybody to check what I just mentioned about the Niagara Peninsula and the Peace Bridge. As we speak this very day, the border guards have walked off the job because of security concerns and that has the traffic backed up for miles.
Let me ask the hon. member this: how much confidence should we place in the leadership of his government when this is taking place? This has been a continuous problem and the government has not yet dealt with the issue. Could he address that, please?