Mr. Speaker, I rose in the House a few weeks ago to ask the Deputy Prime Minister a serious question about border security. I asked her to explain the government's plan to deal with the problem of people running the border into Canada in their cars and even on foot.
The question itself was not critical of the government. It was not overtly partisan. It is a question that concerns MPs from all four parties, including the governing party, whose ridings lie along the U.S. border. It addressed an issue that has been frequently reported on in the newspapers for months. I posed the question with the safety and security of border guards as my paramount concern. Of course the integrity of the border is also a national security issue and, therefore, of major concern.
I should note in addition that as co-chair of the all party border caucus, my goal is to contribute to the work of the Canadian administration on border issues, not to bash the administration.
As a clear gesture of goodwill and to elicit a helpful response, I sent the Deputy Prime Minister advance notice of the question so she would have an opportunity to inform the House as to how this obvious and alarming problem would be dealt with in the coming weeks and months. I believe anyone who heard the Deputy Prime Minister's answer would say that she did not get to the heart of the matter. She was unable to explain what specifically was being done to crack down on those running the border.
In fairness, the minister was unable to provide her full reply in the House at that time. Her assistant was gracious enough to provide the balance to me, and I would like to quote the relevant portion of that response for the record. She stated: “The CBSA (Canadian Border Services Agency) takes any allegation of potential breach of security very seriously and investigates all allegations. We have also invested $125 million in federal funding to establish RCMP-led Integrated Border Enforcement Teams along the Canada-U.S. border to harmonize border security efforts of Canadian and U.S. law enforcement”.
At this point, let me be clear that the RCMP integrated border enforcement teams are a long overdue and necessary element of border security. I do not think anyone questions that. However, those teams are not operating full time at numerous border crossings right across Canada, where people are running borders in their cars. They are not operating full time at the Peace Arch crossing in my riding where people are simply walking across the border within sight of the border posts.
I do not fault the integrated enforcement teams for that. That is simply not their mandate. Who is supposed to deal with these violations? The border services guards cannot. They have no authority to apprehend anyone more than 100 feet away from their posts. They are also unarmed. Protocol requires that border services call in the RCMP to apprehend the border runners. However, even if the police can respond within minutes, the runner is often long gone.
The claim that the CBSA investigates all such allegations may be true, but what can it do about the problem? What good is an investigation if there will never be a resolution to the problem?
Again, I ask my question. We have a growing problem. What specifically is the minister planning to do about border runners? At this point, the government has four minutes to respond, and I would hope the minister will take this opportunity to share what plans there are to deal with this growing problem.