Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his intervention in this debate this morning. I know he is a very experienced member of Parliament. He has had a great deal of immigration work in his constituency because he has a large immigrant new Canadian community in his riding as I do in mine.
Like the member for Trinity—Spadina, I was a constituency assistant for many years and had to deal with many situations where families faced complications in their immigration status. The most difficult ones were where a family was being separated because of some immigration problem or there was the threat of that. For many years I was able to say that family reunification, keeping families together, was a key principle of Canada's immigration policy. That was the overriding concern of what our immigration policy was about. Yet we have this phenomenon, this particular aspect of the way immigration law is enforced that actually forces spouses of Canadians out of the country because of some problem with their immigration status.
Could the member comment on the importance of ensuring that keeping families together remains the key principle of our overall immigration policy?