Mr. Speaker, it is not often that anything productive emerges from the chaos of question period. However, it is true that a substantive policy question put by the member for Vaughan, in March 2009, made me realize that there might just be the possibility of common ground in this place on the hugely important issue of asylum reform.
I am a former director of question period for the official opposition. Perhaps, on occasion, we can allow substantive exchanges to replace partisan rhetoric, which is an inevitable part of the combative atmosphere that is the Westminster system. I would hope that we can sometimes emulate the kind of exchange the member for Vaughan and I had in March 2009.
Let me thank him again for his diligence on this, for his efforts to reach out and bring along members of his caucus, and for his responsible ideas. I would, perhaps, just ask him a question. One thing that troubles me about these reforms is that they need to work. This bill is a very carefully calibrated, balanced package of reforms. We know that previous efforts to adopt an efficient asylum system have been occasionally crippled by unexpected judicial decisions and by lawyers seeking to burden the system.
If that happens, I hope that he would agree with me that we are not closing the book on a fair and fast asylum system. It is an ongoing process. This Parliament will have to be responsible in the future for responding to developing circumstances, whatever they may be. For the people reading this transcript years from now, I hope he will convey that there is an ongoing responsibility to make sure that the system we are seeking to fix now does not become broken again in the future, for whatever reason.