Madam. Speaker, there have been arguments about the wording of all this. Setting that aside, it is clear that there are a lot of irregular crossings and that the problem is growing. Why will the government not address this problem?
There is a problem right across the country, and it is important that the government speak with the U.S. administration in order to solve it.
I do not understand why the government is not talking to the United States government about this. Let me put this to the government: What if the shoe were on the other foot? What if Canada plunges into a deep recession as a result of a housing crash or some other deep recession, unemployment skyrockets, economic growth is negative, and we have the opposite happening? What if we have literally tens of thousands of people irregularly crossing the border from Canada into the United States? We would not have much leverage to renegotiate the safe third country agreement. We would be under inordinate pressure as a government and a country to give the Americans whatever they want in order to ensure that the free trade of goods and services continues to flow across that border.
Why is the government not taking the opportunity today to bring this challenge to the administration, to seek a remedy here that would stem the flow of irregular border crossers so that we can regulate this problem before it becomes a real crisis in the other direction?