Mr. Speaker, I do not know where the member would have gotten the impression that I was surprised that the bill was being debated today. There was no surprise there whatsoever. If he wants to talk about the surprise, that happened back at the end of June in the winding days of the session. It might have been within the last week or the last few days of the session when the minister had a press conference saying that the government would deal with foreign criminals and then listed his top five foreign criminals. That came out of virtually nowhere.
We have had lots of time to look at the bill and, as the member pointed out, I even had the opportunity to have a couple of briefings on the bill itself.
I indicated that I was surprised that the minister himself, representing the government, did not speak first given the fact that we were just outside having a press conference. This speaks to the priorities of the House of Commons versus posturing. That is something that ultimately the minister himself will need to provide comment on and I am sure he will come up with some dandy excuses for us.
In regard to the ministerial power, I do not have the same level of confidence as the parliamentary secretary does with regard to the minister. I believe there needs to be a check put into place to ensure there is more accountability on this particular issue for the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism to be responsible to.