Mr. Speaker, this government recognizes that the member for Davenport and his party failed to do anything about the number of people who are in Canada illegally except watch their numbers grow over 13 years.
We also recognize that the former Liberal government left a backlog of over 800,000 people waiting to come here through legitimate channels. We deal every day with the former Liberal government's failure to make immigration and labour programs work for Canadians and for Canada.
Canada's new government and Canadians also recognize that the solution to these failings is not to declare an amnesty to say the rules no longer apply. Canadians and their new government respect fairness and the rule of law. Amnesty would be patently unfair to the thousands of people who seek to come to Canada every year and are prepared to follow the rules.
Instead, Canada's new Conservative government is working to find ways to address labour shortages and encourage responsible and responsive immigration. This work is well under way and many groups and stakeholders will be part of that process, but we are not prepared to embrace a stopgap measure that compromises the basic principles of the rule of law.