Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague.
We are in the inner sanctum here tonight. We are basically the only ones here, as my colleague said.
I understand the difference between someone who enters the country legally and someone who is seeking refuge in Canada. However, I am talking about illegal immigrants. We need to distinguish between the two, and that is where the problem lies. People do not understand that.
On August 25, 2018, in a letter to the Canadian Bar Association that was published in a newspaper, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship admitted that the number of refugee claimants far exceeded what the current system can handle.
The National Post noted that the letter's tone was unusually strong for the minister in question, who often describes Canada's immigration and border control system as strict and efficient. The article talks about two different realities.
I personally have been asking for quite some time—