Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's question. However, my concern is based on international experience on this issue. If we were to turn Lacolle into a legal port of entry, then, very simply, they would go elsewhere. These are people who are seeking to cross irregularly. They are seeking to evade the current system.
I would bring this back to an example in the United States. In the United States in El Paso, when the decision was to effectively create a blockage on the entire border and border agents were literally lined up for miles and miles in every direction to block people, what ended up happening was that those migrants moved into the desert. The U.S. still has the same movement of migrants and has not fixed the problem at all. In fact, the number of illegal migrants is just as large, but the difference is that about 10,000 migrants have died in the desert. They had simply been forced into more dangerous, more vulnerable positions where women and children were dying in dangerous places.
Canada is no different, in the sense that we have a very formidable wilderness. What we need to do instead is get into the places where misinformation is being disseminated in these communities to stop them from making this futile journey, because if their claim is not legitimate, they will be turned back. Second, we need to work with our American counterparts to ensure that people who are coming into the United States are not just coming with the intention of trying to jump to Canada. Obviously, that is something that we are working on with the United States as well.
It is a complicated situation, but there is firm international evidence that if we take inappropriate action, it will lead to a continuation of the problem and loss of life.