Mr. Speaker, foreign nationals whether they have status or not in Canada are affected by the same provisions for inadmissibility and deportation as exist, whether they are permanent residents or out of status.
First, we have substantially increased resources to the Canada Border Services Agency by some 800 the number of front-line CBSA officers. They are the people responsible for removing foreign national criminals, for example, from Canada. As a result of the increase in those resources, we have seen the number of removals go from about 13,000 to over 16,000. There has been a huge increase in the number of removals, including of convicted foreign criminals, be they out of status or with permanent residency.
Second, the member is quite right, and I grant him this point, to criticize the government for not knowing how many out of status foreign nationals are present in Canada, which is precisely why we are now moving forward with the introduction of an exit information system. It should have been done a long time ago. It should have been done years ago, I grant that. It should have been done under the previous Liberal government, but it was not.
We are getting that right. We will now know how many foreign nationals are illegally in Canada and therefore will be able to remove them much more efficiently.