Madam Speaker, the member brought up in his intervention how we would treat people who are returning from overseas who have potentially committed serious war crimes or crimes against humanity, so I wonder if he can elaborate on this matter.
We have individuals who either fought for, fought with or are sympathizers of ISIS, such as Daesh, a proto-state across the Syrian-Iraqi border, which committed many war crimes and crimes against humanity. We now have families who are returning from a specific camp, which is not too far from Al-Hol, and there are about 70,000 POWs and families being held there. These Canadians are being returned to Canada and being charged with offences by the RCMP for travelling overseas to join a terrorist organization and for membership in a terrorist organization.
Beyond that, it is very difficult for the Canadian government to prove crimes that were conducted overseas because the collection of evidence may not be ideal, the witnesses might be dead or we just may not know who they are, so I wonder if the member can elaborate on that, because that is part of the sanctions regime as well.
Some of these individuals should be sanctioned, and others are not being sanctioned because we do not know they are members of these organizations. This is where the difficulty lies. We can only make someone inadmissible if we know what they are being made inadmissible for, and part of this legislation will need a lot of intelligence-gathering.
I am just putting a lot of ideas on the table for the member to add to the discussion.