Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to respond this evening to the question put and also to comment that I look forward to working with my hon. colleague on the Standing Committee on Citizenship Immigration and Multiculturalism.
I appreciate the depth with which he is at least attempting to put forward in a positive way. He and I could spend some time dealing with the scope and magnitude of the issues that the Immigration and Refugee Board faces when it has to make decisions with respect to individuals.
I really do want to try to address the issue. It is an interesting point and one that deserves an answer, but it is very difficult. We are not in any way, shape or form allowed to divulge personal information, the personal decision-making process about individuals or families who make application to come to Canada, under many different magnitudes and many different opportunities. I find it difficult, based on the fact that the hon. member has pointed out a very specific case. He has the details. He has obviously been given authority by the family to speak to those details. We, as a government, are not in a position to do that.
Quite frankly, I do find that somewhat frustrating and difficult. In my years as parliamentary secretary at Citizenship and Immigration, I have noticed time and time again that members of the opposition speak to individual cases. Many of those times, those questions that arise during question period are not cases that have been brought forward by that individual to either myself or to the minister to review or at least accept the issue, the concern, on a private basis. Generally speaking, they are done in a way that those issues have been brought out through the media. The individuals, the families have gone to the media to discuss these issues and think it is a way that will somehow assist them in their case.
I can assure the House that it does not assist anyone. It does not assist the government, or the individual or the family. It certainly does not assist members of Parliament who have brought these forward, unless members do so because it would somehow assist them in their goals as opposition members to try to make the government look bad. I am certainly not suggesting that my colleague, the critic of the opposition party, is doing it for that reason. I do not believe that, but I believe a number of members of Parliament bring these issues up during question period to do that.
I ask this evening that all opposition members, who determine that cases like this, cases that they believe will offer them some sort of media hype or media attention or assist them in their own careers, not to do it in this way.
The way we should be working through this process is simply by speaking to each other, obviously an individual member of Parliament from the opposition speaking with myself as the parliamentary secretary or speaking with the minister in order to try to assist them with the individual case. It really makes it difficult for me to speak to an issue that the member has brought forward with respect to illness on the one hand and on the other hand in his specific case, the issue of autism and the impact that has on an individual's opportunity to come to Canada, whether it be through permanent residency or whether it would be to study, whatever that issue may be.
However, as members of the opposition know, before they stand to ask these questions, they will not get a specific answer. We are simply not allowed to proceed and put forward an individual member's private issues under our Privacy Act.