Mr. Speaker, I just want to mention to my colleague that if the Prime Minister wants to stand up and make the suggestion that we override the jurisdictions of the charter in Alberta and other places, I would applaud that. I hope the suggestion is made to the Prime Minister in that regard.
I have a question for my colleague, and I think it is an important consideration because she has seen a number of ministers come and go. In the case of the Liberals, it was one every two years. In the case of the Conservatives, it is one every six months. That is the average we have and that is the problem we have.
One of the problems we have in the department is that we need to split the citizenship and immigration parts because they are totally different. Citizenship has the mandate for all Canadians and naturalized Canadians should never be looked upon as graduate immigrants. Immigration has a totally different set of challenges.
We need to somehow depoliticize the Department of Citizenship and Immigration as much as possible. The challenges are there for all parties, all Canadians and certainly all governments when they get into office. One of the ways we could do that is to have longer term membership on the committee and appoint ministers who understand the portfolio.
In the case of the last Parliament, we had a critic over there who had been a critic for about four years. She had two cross-Canada tours and was by far the most knowledgeable person on the Conservative side to deal with the file. We also had the member--