Madam Speaker, that intervention was certainly living up to the standard that we all expect of the member. In part, of course, he very casually casts the most disgusting aspersions on his adversaries. Rather than simply disagreeing on substance, he made all sorts of allegations of bad faith, which is what he does best. I commend him for that.
For example, he implied that this government somehow politicizes against the tradition of refugee protection. Let me be very clear. This government has increased the resettlement of refugees to Canada to the highest level ever, higher than any ever under the Liberal government. We will be bringing in 14,500 resettled refugees next year. After the government to which he belonged froze the numbers for refugee resettlement, we are increasing the refugee assistance program by 20%. What kind of government that tries to politicize against refugees actually brings more of them and gives them more support?
I have a question for him. Why did his government not do the same thing if it was really in favour of refugee protection? Why did it freeze the refugee assistance program for 13 years? Why did it freeze the number of resettled refugees? I am not going to allege that there was a bad motive in that, because I think that would be unreasonable and unfair. I am sure it had sound reasons, but then to turn around and cast aspersions on the motives of a government that is doing more to help refugees than any in recent Canadian history is very pathetic.
However, I just want to ask him this. If he says this is not tough enough on the smugglers, I have a very simple question. What is his alternative? What would the Liberal Party do to stop the smuggling operations? We have the police and our intelligence agencies working in the transit countries. There have been detentions there. What would he do? If not mandatory minimum sentences, what is his solution?