Joe Comartin

[Criminal Code, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, that has been proposed by the government over this last week several times. Obviously, the member did not pay attention to my speech with regard to the inadequacies of the bill and where the amendments need to, in particular, address the issue of real estate fraud.

I am very conscious of the impact this has on victims. I am very conscious that the impact is most severe when people lose their homes, as opposed to getting an extra $5,000 they have to pay back on a credit card or having their bank account stripped of all the money. That may be $5,000, but losing a home is anywhere from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to as much as a million dollars because of this.

The bill does not go far enough. For that reason alone we need to take a look at it. We need to hear from the credit granting agencies in this country because it seems to me they have additional requirements to make. Passing the bill as it is now would not address adequately the problems we are confronted with.

[Criminal Code, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill S-4, a substantial irritation in my emotional level. I say that because the bill and this problem has been around the House for way too long a period of time. It has been delayed repeatedly by the government in spite of the reality of the problem for the whole of the country. Large numbers of people are suffering very negative consequences from identity theft criminal acts.

I want to go through it because it bothers me that the government pretends to be strong on crime and says that it will fight it in every way, but the bill is a classic example of how it is attempting to mislead the public in that regard.

The bill was introduced in the last Parliament to address the issue. It has had some amendments since then. It was knocked off its normal rotation because of prorogation by the government in September 2007. It was reintroduced when Parliament reopened. It went through the process of first and second reading. It was sent to the justice committee by March 2008, at which point, we were confronted with a justice committee that no longer functioned because the Conservative chair refused to call meetings or when he called meetings, he would abruptly get up and leave the chair and nobody would replace him. That went on until the summer of 2008 and early fall, when again the government stopped Parliament by calling an election against long-term promise by the Prime Minister not to do that.

We came back after the election and we were into a whole battle over conduct of the government in terms of not seriously addressing the fiscal crisis that both this country and countries internationally were confronting. Then we had another prorogation in December 2008.

We came back after the prorogation and what did we see? We saw this bill, not coming to the House, not to the elected chamber in our Parliament, but going to the unelected chamber down the hall, where it sat. Finally it was sent over here earlier this week.

The bill should have been law by the end of 2007, at least the initial issues that we were addressing, even without the amendments. At the rate we are going, it is not going to be law until sometime near the end of 2009. All of that delay is because of the government.

It is quite clear that the Conservatives cannot claim they did not know how serious the problem of identity theft was in the country. The member from Alberta on the government side introduced a private member's on this issue in a very concrete and extensive way. Unfortunately, it was not the appropriate mechanism to deal with a problem of this size. However, that bill is almost three years old. Therefore, in a very clear and irrefutable way the House has known about this problem for at least three years. It knew what we needed to do about it, as well, in terms of a legislative response.

The Criminal Code, as it is right now, is inadequate to deal with the identity theft problem. We have provisions in the code around forgery, impersonation, creating false documents, but they are a reflection of a technology and a societal norm that is 40 or 50 years out of date for the current situation we have. The ability, for instance, to manufacture large numbers of credit cards is a technology that has only existed for about 10 years. The ability to get personal identification numbers, or PINs, credit card numbers and other identification numbers electronically and in large volume has only been possible as the Internet developed, realistically the last five years.

We knew for at least three years, though I would say any of us working in this area at all knew for much longer than that. The government certainly knew, the Department of Justice knew, and our police forces knew. In spite of all that knowledge, here we are today in the House debating this bill at second reading once again.

The bill itself in fact addresses a number of the issues. When the bill was in Parliament last time, my party was prepared to support it, as far as it went. Its inadequacies are some of the areas it does not touch on.

We heard the question earlier from the member for Yukon about whether it adequately addresses the issue, in the 21st century, of mechanisms one can use to steal an identity from someone and impersonate that person. We will know better once we hear from some more of the experts, but the answer to that question is that it probably does not. I am not sure this bill goes far enough to address that issue. It does in part, and I will credit the government for that, but I am not sure it does fully.

There are some good provisions in the bill. We heard questions today around the difficulty of dealing with identity theft in our civil courts, which has been a real problem in terms of their ability to deal with it, but mostly on the part of the individual who has been wronged to be able to identify the person who stole the identity and profited from it to the victim's disadvantage.

Again being critical of the government, there are not adequate police resources deployed in this area. It is interesting that the approach of the government has always been to concentrate on what it calls serious crime, but it is usually stereotypical of criminals who are drug addicts or other addicts, or have serious mental health problems, who commit violent acts.

If we look at the bills that we have gone through, almost innumerable since the Conservative government has been in power, I do not think we could point to more than one bill that addresses white-collar crime. That is mostly what we are talking about. This has a major impact on many lives, but as I said earlier, we are four or five years behind where we should be down that road.

I say that not only because of the inadequacies, and at times, incompetencies of the government, but we also have to look at it in comparison to what other jurisdictions have done. Western Europe has developed technological levels the same as ours. The United States, Australia and New Zealand are way ahead of us in dealing with the issue of identity theft, ahead by at least half a decade, in some cases as much as a decade. We are playing catch-up to a very strong degree, and we are not doing it well because of the manoeuvring of the government.

With regard to the ability of our police officers to deal with investigations in this area, it is extremely limited. A number of them do not have sufficient training, but overall, there simply are not enough police officers in this country to deal with this problem. They need additional training. They do not get it when they go through their basic training to become police officers, whether that be the RCMP, or provincial or municipal police officers. They need quite extensive additional education in order to be able to combat this crime at the police level.

I know from talking to prosecutors that they feel that they need additional resources to prosecute adequately. Some of those resources are in the form of changes to the Criminal Code and they are, again to the credit of the government, reflected in some of the amendments that we would be passing if Bill S-4 eventually goes through. In terms of the financial resources, they are clearly not there in sufficient numbers.

When this bill went through the Senate, I believe it received either five or seven amendments. A couple of them seemed to be, on the surface, just very technical amendments. One was changing the singular to the plural, but I think there was something more there. So that will be one of the issues we will have to address at committee.

In the provisions, the government empowered our criminal courts to make restitution orders not only for the costs of the proceedings but also the direct losses suffered by a victim of identity crimes, including compensation for replacing all the documentation they have to replace.

In some cases, it can be very significant compensation. For instance, if someone is in the process of trying to obtain a mortgage, their identity is stolen and their name shows up on a debtors list through some of the credit-granting agencies, they may lose their mortgage, and by the time they get it straightened out, they may have lost the real estate transaction and thereby suffer quite severely. It could be thousands, and in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars in damages by the time they straighten it all out and purchase a new building, which by then would be valued higher. They would have taken a real financial hit.

The section that would be amended with regard to restitution would allow an individual to show that evidence to a criminal court and have them order the perpetrator of the crime to compensate the person.

I am sure as people are listening they are thinking that in most cases they would not expect to be able to collect that money back, but the reality with a great deal of identity theft is that, in fact, it is perpetrated by organized crime. So if the individual can be identified, and more importantly, the gang, the organized crime unit, there may be a reasonable opportunity for getting those damages back. The proposed restitution amendment is very appropriate and could turn out to be quite a valuable tool.

With regard to the other sections, the principle sections, creating the offence of identity theft is absolutely crucial. Again, our Criminal Code is so far out of date with regard to the type of criminal activity that is going on here that it is just impossible to use for identity theft as it is being performed now. That is very important, and we are quite supportive of that.

Creating greater penalties and clearer offences for creating identity documents, whether those be ones issued by the government or some other level of government or documents of a commercial nature that would identify a person, in all cases I think these amendments catch that type of activity and clearly make it a crime with appropriate penalties attached.

One of the amendments that came from the Senate was a five-year review that was not in the bill that the government had originally presented. I think that is probably an appropriate amendment, one that we can support. Unfortunately, as so often happens with those reviews, they get done much later than when they are scheduled, in part because the justice committee is so busy. However, we would support that.

I want to address a few comments to the inadequacies of the bill, in particular in the real estate area. I have had some contact with individuals who work in that area. We have had a number of quite notorious cases in Ontario.

In fact, there was a court judgment that I think the average citizen was shocked by, where a couple had bought a condo in the Toronto area and were in residence for I think it was 17 years, but someone else, a criminal, forged documents, created a false identity, went into a lawyer's office and signed documents that put a very large mortgage on that condo, I think it was $200,000, impersonating the real owners. Ultimately this was discovered. The bank took action against the owner. It came out clearly that it was a situation where they had not participated at all in the fraud, but a court in Ontario ruled that in fact the mortgage could be enforced against them.

This ultimately required, I believe, an amendment to the legislation in Ontario retroactively to prevent the consequences of that decision. However, that type of ruling could in fact happen in other provinces, as I understand the situation today.

Bill S-4 does not address that issue at all, as I see it. Again, that is why it is crucial for this to go to committee. Unless I hear opposite from legal experts there, I think this is an area where we need to buttress the bill and put additional provisions in to make it very clear what the penalties will be if that kind of fraud is perpetrated, but also to protect valid legal homeowners and business interests as well.

I have heard from title insurance people in Ontario that there is a current section in the Criminal Code that addresses this in part, but it is way out of date. They are looking for amendments in that regard. It is one of the ones that I think we would have to try to convince the government to support and bring those people in to indicate what the situation is.

I can say that this issue has occupied a significant amount of time of the law societies across all provinces and territories. They have spent, I would say, the better part of the last 10 years trying to get some reasonable controls in place so that type of abuse does not occur.

Lawyers in Ontario, as recently as this past year, have had imposed upon them much greater responsibility to ensure that the person who is sitting at their desk signing legal documents is in fact that person and not pretending to be someone else.

That has taken a great deal of effort by all the law societies. We do not know yet whether it is going to be successful in terms of preventing these types of frauds, but that is what the provinces have done.

Correspondingly, we need to do more at the federal level in the Criminal Code. I think the section of the code that deals with this area and is not addressed at all in the bill, from what I can see, needs to be strengthened quite significantly.

Once we hear more evidence on this, and I am not sure what happened at the Senate as to whether it addressed this problem, I think we are going to find that the whole issue of impersonation appears not to be dealt with strongly enough. We will probably have to look for some amendments to strengthen the bill there.

I will make one final point. We have heard from the banking system and credit card granting companies that they are very interested in coming forward. I am left with the impression that they think there is additional work that needs to be done on Bill S-4 to strengthen it, to try to prevent these types of crimes from happening. Again, it is very important for this to go to the committee for that purpose.

We will be supporting the bill in principle going to the committee, hopefully to strengthen it there and bring it back for third reading and passage and finally get this into place, in spite of all the delays we have had from the government.

[Criminal Code, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to pursue the issue of lawful excuse. When I first looked at this provision, it caused me a good deal of concern as to why we would be doing this for this specific crime. There is the general section in section 25 of the code. Why would we not have amended section 25, if that was necessary, as opposed to creating a new section in this part of the code under identity theft?

If we are doing it with regard to identity theft, in how many more sections of the code are we going to use this specific type of lawful excuse, as opposed to using the more general one with the protections it has against potential abuse? That caused us a great deal of concern when we first passed section 25 with regard to lawful excuse, and it continues to be of great concern to the justice committee.

I am wondering whether we are now going to see a series of amendments to the code in other criminal offences and why would we do that as opposed to simply amending, if necessary--and I have some doubts about whether it is necessary--section 25.

[Criminal Code, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is simply not as effective.

I have a sister in British Columbia, as well, who also had her car stolen. I remember her talking to me about the bait program because that was the first time I heard about it. It has been used there. It is expensive to staff those vehicles with all the police resources that have to be put into play.

The use of the immobilizer is, in effect, mandatorily imposed through the auto insurance scheme. The Government of British Columbia could be doing the same because it has public auto insurance there as well. It would have a much more effective result.

[Criminal Code, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Manitoba is very accurate in the assessment of what happened over that decade period of time. The auto industry was, in so many other ways, reluctant to come into the latter part of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st century, and we have seen it in all sorts of ways.

Equally, as I said earlier in my speech, critical of the insurance industry in this country. If it had come onside earlier, we could have reduced these numbers quite dramatically, greater than we have been able to up to this point.

I want to make one more point in this regard. We are going through this again right now with the auto industry and the insurance industry. There is technology that is fairly close to being usable on all vehicles that would prevent the vehicle from starting if the person was intoxicated as a result of alcohol. We are very close to having that. We are close to being able to do it economically.

But, again, there is great resistance from the auto companies, less so in Europe than here, but there is still great resistance. When we look at the tragedies that occur on a daily basis as a result of impaired driving due to alcohol, it is one of those areas where additional research should be done and that technology developed and carried on. If we have not learned from this experience, maybe we will when we see what the consequences are when we finally get those types of immobilizers on vehicles to prevent drunk driving in this country.

[Criminal Code, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have no explanation for what happened.

According to one statistic, between 1997 and 2007, car thefts decreased by 45.5% in Ontario.

At the same time, big cities, like Toronto and Windsor, started cracking down on street gangs. That is a considerable percentage, and I see no other explanation for the decrease in car thefts. Nothing else was done. There were no immobilizers installed or anything like that. I do not know why there was this decrease.

I hope that it is the direct result of the actions taken by our police.

[Criminal Code, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have two answers to that. First, anybody who has practised law for any length of time and knows what goes on in our criminal courts would think that it is a joke that one is only going to get six months in jail after a third theft. That is what the bill does. It has another condition to it. It is also required to have the prosecutor move by way of indictment. Otherwise, the mandatory minimum does not apply. On the third offence, an application must be made by way of indictment.

Again, this is so typical of the ideology that drives the Conservative Party. It puts out a big dramatic statement that we are going to solve all the car theft problems by imposing a mandatory minimum of six months and it expects the Canadian public to believe that. I do not believe that and I do not think the Canadian public is going to buy it.

The second reason why we are systematically opposed to mandatory minimums is because we trust our judges. I can point to any number of cases that I have seen over the years where judges blew it. They made a mistake. They are human. However, in my belief, they are still the best judges in the world. I have a great deal of faith in their ability to look at the individual case and decide to give someone two and a half years instead of six months.

In the vast majority of cases, that is the kind of penalty the repeat offenders are going to be looking at, certainly with anything involving organized crime. They are going down for hard time and probably going to federal pens. The problem with putting a six-month mandatory minimum into it is that that then becomes the target. That is the one that the judges start adhering to. It is a useless piece of the bill.

[Criminal Code, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-26, which addresses the issue of auto theft.

As has been said throughout debate on the bill, not only in this Parliament but in the previous one, there is strong support from the NDP. I want to start off by being critical of the government. The bill should have been passed into law at least a year or year and a half ago if it had not used a number of tactics to slow down the work of the justice committee, preventing bills like this one from moving ahead.

I want to provide a caution and I will do that in a bit more detail as I get into my speech. This is not the be all and the end all. When I was preparing some notes for my speech this morning, it made me think of one of the lawyers I articled for and one of my law professors, who became a judge while I was still in law school.

Both of them gave me what I thought was some very good advice. As a lawyer, a judge or a legislator, one cannot always look to solutions in the law as a strictly legislative approach. There are a good number of times when the better approach is a practical one. That is very true with regard to this bill. It fills some cracks that exist in the Criminal Code and for that reason the NDP is pleased to support it. However, in terms of dealing with the issue of auto theft, practical, street-level solutions are going to be much more effective in dramatically reducing the numbers.

I will put this into context. During the course of the committee's work in analyzing the bill, we heard a good deal of evidence from representatives of Statistics Canada, specifically Juristat, on what the current situation was in Canada with regard to auto theft and what it had been over the last several decades.

It is interesting that with so much other crime in our country, auto thefts are in fact in decline. That is not in any way to minimize the problem with which we are faced. As we have heard from some of the other speakers, we are still averaging almost 150,000 thefts per year across the whole of the country. It varies quite significantly from province to province and even from city to city within provinces.

Overall, if we look at the statistics, on a per 100,000 population, we averaged about 375 thefts 30 years ago, in 1977. That peaked at slightly over 600 thefts per 100,000 in the 1996-97 period of time. It has declined since then, with several peaks during that period of time. In 2007, which is the last year we have statistics for, it is down to about 450 per 100,000 population in the country, again with very wide variations across the country.

I would note that because of the work done in the installation of immobilizers, when we see the statistics for 2008, which we will receive some time in July, I expect that number to be down even more dramatically to close to about 400. This is the information being received particularly from Manitoba and more generally across the country. We were at 375 per 100,000 in 1977 and we will be fairly close to that by the end of 2008. I am expecting an ongoing decline, so it will be almost a straight line from 2009 back to 1977, when we began gathering these figures.

Having put that in context, it is important to emphasize what has happened historically over that period of time.

Traditionally, we have looked at auto theft from three vantage points in terms of how they are perpetrated.

I think back to when I was first starting to practise law in the early 1970s. Clearly, joyriding, as we called it then and now, constituted by far the larger percentage of auto thefts. That is no longer the case. It still happens, and in fact, in provinces such as Manitoba that have a disproportionate number of thefts, it is quite clear from the statistics and the nature of the theft that the joyriding percentage is still quite high there. In the rest of the country, it has come down dramatically.

We have that theft, and obviously with the joyriding, it is almost always a young person, oftentimes young people who cannot even drive legally, who will steal a vehicle for a very short period of time and then abandon it. That vehicle is generally recovered.

The second type of theft has become a fairly recent phenomenon. We cannot even put percentages on it, but we know it is happening at a more significant rate than it was as recently as even five years ago, and certainly 10 years ago. This is a theft that is perpetrated by an individual who steals the vehicle for the purposes of committing another crime. We have what would be expected as the usual types of thefts, sometimes for armed robbery, sometimes for kidnapping, and more often for break and enter and they are using the vehicle to transport the stolen goods. In the vast majority of those thefts, the vehicle is then subsequently abandoned, if the person is not apprehended.

The third one, of which we have seen a significant increase in percentage, is theft for profit. It is organized crime stealing large numbers of vehicles at the high end. These would be more valuable vehicles, specifically targeted for this purpose.

Interestingly enough, it has a couple of interesting phenomena. One, organized crime is generally engaging or hiring young people to steal the vehicles, the directing mind never going near them, having set up a chain where it is usually stolen by a street gang member, delivered to the organized crime centre where the vehicle is altered in some way, sometimes completely taken apart for parts, but most often altered in some way, sometimes painted, and then shipped out of the country, oftentimes to Africa and Asia, those two markets. They are going into countries where there is much more limited enforcement of laws and they are sold there, oftentimes at greater value than they could be sold at as used vehicles in Canada. One of the parts of this bill specifically addresses that issue, but I will come back to that.

So we have this phenomenon that is growing, we believe, from the numbers we are seeing, that is using young people just starting out in their criminal careers, being hired to steal vehicles, and those vehicles are being put into a network and ultimately exported from the country.

One of the ways we know this is happening is in looking at statistics for thefts and how often the vehicle is recovered. We know, and we have learned this from police and prosecutors, that once they determine the facts of the theft they are able to say that this was the stereotypical joyriding, and in the large percentage of cases, as I said earlier, those vehicles are abandoned and then recovered, oftentimes intact, sometimes with some damage as the result of an accident.

On the other hand, if it is part of organized crime, if it is a theft for profit, the percentage of successful recoveries is extremely low, because those vehicles, in a large number of cases, are exported from the country or they go through a chop shop and the parts are sold off, so the vehicle is never recovered intact.

It is interesting to look at the proof of this by comparing the figures for Manitoba, specifically Winnipeg, and for Montreal.

From the testimony we heard from witnesses and the statistics we are seeing, it is our belief that organized crime syndicates in Quebec, and specifically in the Montreal area, are very active in this network of auto theft, whereas in Manitoba, the vast majority of thefts are more of the joyriding kind. The recovery rate of stolen vehicles in Manitoba is over 80%; in Montreal, it is right around 30%. We can do that comparison with other cities and provinces, but this statistic is the one that is the most telling.

My next point goes back to the comment I made about my law professor and senior when I was articling, about practical solutions.

On a percentage basis, auto thefts are dropping in the country. We cannot attribute that to this legislation since it is not yet in effect. It should have been, but that is the government's problem. The reason that auto theft is decreasing is really because of two things that have happened.

By September 1, 2007, all new vehicles in Canada had to have immobilizers. These immobilizers have had the effect of stopping thefts of the joyriding kind by almost 100%. The individual who steals a car for joyriding purposes does not have the sophistication, the competency, or the criminal network to steal a vehicle.

For almost two years we have seen a decline in the number of thefts of the joyriding kind and thefts for the purpose of committing another crime, the reason being that the individual could not get the vehicle to start. It was just not possible.

However, organized crime looked at that and decided to change its method of operation. We know from apprehensions in the Montreal area in particular that organized crime will acquire a towing vehicle, either by stealing it or leasing it, or whatever, and steal 10 or 20 cars in one evening by towing them away. Those cars then go into the network and are sold off internationally.

The rate of auto theft in Manitoba is three times the average for the country. Abbotsford, B.C., the other city that is close statistically, has a little better than twice the average of the rest of the country.

The Government of Manitoba, through its public auto insurance, required everyone to have an immobilizer on their vehicle in order to get insurance. It had tried doing that on a somewhat voluntary basis for about a year but had very little uptake. When it was mandated, thefts in Winnipeg specifically, but Manitoba generally, dropped dramatically. We have not seen the final figures because the full year would have been 2008, but we know that in 2007 the figure declined.

My colleague from Winnipeg, who used to be a provincial member of Parliament, stood up in the House about a month or so ago and proudly announced that, for the first time, the city of Winnipeg went a whole 24 hours without an auto theft.

Immobilizers have had a dramatic impact in driving the numbers down. Because the numbers came down so dramatically in Manitoba, the numbers have been brought down for the rest of the country.

That was a practical solution, and I have been quite critical of the private insurance industry in this country for not following suit, because it is obviously working. They have been before the committee a number of times on this bill and others, in the form of the Insurance Bureau of Canada. They set out their statistics, which I am sure are quite accurate, about the losses they are taking and what it is costing the rest of the community in terms of health care costs, our police officers' time, and our prosecutors and our judges.

I ask them why they do not get their members to follow the example of the Government of Manitoba. It is working there clearly. We are driving the rates down, we think, by as much as 40% or 50%. I do not get a satisfactory answer from them. They are quite prepared to slough this off to others, including this level of government, but the problem of auto theft is something that the private insurance industry could solve to a significant degree. If they did that, if every car in this country were required at this time to have an immobilizer in order to be insured, we would see the auto theft rate drop in this country by as much as 50%. They will not do that.

With regard to the bill itself, it has four specific provisions, all of which we support.

It first would create a specific offence of auto theft. At this point, in the code, the theft of an auto is treated like the theft of household furniture or other property. We are creating a separate offence, and there are good reasons for doing that in the case of some legal decisions we have had over what is the theft of a vehicle. It is important that we do that.

The second section is even more important. It would create a specific offence for tampering with the VIN, the identification number that all vehicles have. As I said earlier, this is an area where we are going right at organized crime, because in the vast majority of cases, they are the ones who are taking vehicles apart or altering the VIN before they export them to Asia or Africa. That section would make it a specific offence.

The next point is that it would create additional authority where, in terms of dealing with the export issue, we would authorizing the CBSA to specifically intervene when they find stolen parts and stolen vehicles that are being shipped out of the country. Historically, they have had to call the local police force to intervene, because they did not have a specific jurisdiction. We would now give that to them.

I have to say to the government again that I do not believe it has addressed in any adequate way the additional resources that are going to be need. We heard from the committee chair, in one of my questions earlier today, that there are going to be efficiencies here. I think the Conservatives are deluding themselves in believing that.

I live on the busiest border crossing in this country and have regular contact with CBSA officials. They have no belief that there can be those kinds of efficiencies when they are taking on this additional responsibility. I think we are going to see that this part of the legislation will not be very useful, because our officers at the border will not have the resources to actually deal with it.

The final point on this bill is that it raised some concern with a delegation that came before us that we would allow a defence of lawful excuse. This would be where a vehicle has been in an accident and the damage to the vehicle is where the VIN is situated. A regular repair shop would have to deal with that part of the vehicle and would not be guilty of an offence for tampering with that.

It went a bit further, and we have some concerns about that. It is an issue that we will have to address. I just want to say to that delegation that we heard them and we will be monitoring this on an ongoing basis.

We are going to support this bill. I hope the government will find a way to provide those additional resources to the Canada Border Services Agency and get this through as quickly as possible, having delayed it for over two years now.

[Criminal Code, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, as a follow-up to that, we have been pursuing this issue of resources for CBSA. I appreciate the comments from the chair of the committee, but the reality is there has been no indication that an analysis has been done of what additional resources are necessary. Therefore, it is hard to accept with full credibility the Minister of Public Safety's assurance that the resources will be there when an analysis has not been done. Also, because an analysis has not been done, I have a hard time understanding how the government could apportion any additional resources that are going to be required to deal with the export of stolen vehicles and stolen auto parts out of this country to international markets.

I would ask the member if he knows whether an analysis has been done. Up to this point we have been led to believe it has not been done. If it has been done, how much additional resources are going to be put in, in terms of dollars, to the CBSA?

[Justice, June 8th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is now four days since the Federal Court ordered the government to facilitate the immediate return to Canada of Mr. Abdelrazik. He is required to appear before the court at 2 p.m. on July 7, 2009, whether the government launches an appeal or not. He has in his possession a fully paid ticket for June 12.

Can the Minister of Foreign Affairs finally get to his feet in this House and tell us what arrangements he has made to provide the necessary travel for Mr. Abdelrazik to return on June 12?