Mr. Chair, I thank the member for Saint-Jean for his comments. I feel he has raised some very useful points.
We need to clarify that the government has been very active on this particular issue. There were some timelines mentioned earlier in the House referring to this initiative of the United States. In fact, the intelligence reform and terrorism prevention act was passed in the United States in December 2004, and that mandated the department of homeland security to implement a system where foreign nationals and U.S. citizens would present a passport when entering the United States.
I should point out that we have had much success on other issues. Canada is the only country to be exempted from the U.S. visitor program which requires fingerprinting. We were able to successfully lobby for that. The government has been on this particular issue for some time at the official level and at the political level. It is not an easy issue, but I thank the member for his constructive comments. He is right on when he says that it is American citizens who have as much at stake with this as Canadian citizens.