Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague and I are both members of the citizenship and immigration committee, but I am surprised by some of the content of his question.
First and foremost, I would stress that one of the most important roles of any government is ensuring the safety and security of its Canadian citizens.
The government and this country need to move toward biometrics. That would be in line with many other countries and our allies around the world, who have been using biometrics for a very long time. To be specific, we could talk about the fact that if biometrics had been place years ago, people who are now in Canada might not be here and there would have been no need to deport them 10, 12, or 15 times.
My hon. colleague across the way in the Liberal Party talked about the cost of this particular system. That is interesting because the provisions in Bill C-31 would actually save taxpayers $1.65 billion over five years. That is what we should be talking about, respect for taxpayers dollars and the safety and security of Canadian citizens.