Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the honourable member on her comments.
She has reiterated the opposition's argument that detaining illegal immigrants for a certain period of time is a violation of international human rights conventions, which is completely false. It is completely false.
I would point out that almost all other liberal democracies in the world have much more severe detention measures for illegal immigrants than those proposed in Bill C-4. For example, the vast majority of the democracies in the European Union, which are signatories to the UN conventions on refugees and European conventions on human rights, keep asylum seekers in detention until their status is established. The process is often much longer than the 12-month maximum proposed by this bill.
Why is it a violation for Canada to place illegal immigrants in detention in certain limited cases when it is quite all right for all other democracies to use the same tool?