Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Saint-Lambert raised an excellent point.
Indeed, that point was raised in committee by people such as border officers, who are on the front lines when it comes to enforcing this proposed bill. The border officers' union raised two specific problems, contrary to what the Conservative government has claimed.
The first problem is downsizing. In the coming years, we expect that border services will lose 1,000 positions as a result of cuts. The second problem has to do with training. If there is no stability within border services, meaning that border crossings are being shut down and reopened, as was the case in Niagara Falls, we lose people who were already trained and who would simply need to update their skills, especially when it comes to detecting these goods. We are losing them because they have no job security.
These people eventually turn to other fields. Not only are we losing these resources, but we are also losing the training that was invested in them. We are forced to start from scratch. Those are two extremely relevant points raised by the union that represents border officers and that the government and proponents of the bill have not addressed.
This is very unfortunate, and we have some concerns on this side of the House that do not necessarily have to do with the effectiveness of the bill—even if it does have some flaws that could potentially be fixed—but rather with the ability to implement and enforce this bill properly.