Madam Speaker, we have had preliminary discussions with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, our friends in Australia, and with other countries on the concept of a framework in southeast Asia that would allow for the kind of regional protection opportunities to which the member refers.
We are not terribly advanced in these discussions, I have to admit. This is the problem We are talking about a lot of legal, diplomatic, logistical work that would have to be done with a number of countries. But we are committed to pursuing it.
I think one analogy for this would be the way that Indo-Chinese boat people were dealt with in 1979 and 1980, when large numbers of them were fleeing communist oppression. The United Nations established regional processing centres where they could go to have their claims assessed, after which they might be considered eligible for resettlement if they were found to be in need of protection. Canada received some 60,000 people.
Having said that, I can tell you that this is not an easy solution. If one were to create regional protection centres, one would have to avoid allowing a small flow of asylum seekers to become millions of people. There are tens of millions of people around the world who would like to resettle in a developed country, and who feel, for one reason or another, that they are victims of persecution.
Many of these people are economic migrants; there are mixed motives here. This is a difficult question, and the complexity of it tells me that this is not a viable solution to the short-term pressure we are facing from the syndicates today, which why other action needs to be taken, like the action contemplated in the bill.