Citizenship and Immigration committee  If we're basing it on the resources available, I'd have to study that a bit. But based on Canadian labour market needs, I would say probably—and this is a ballpark figure and it will vary with the state of the economy—we could get by quite well on half the number we're bringing in now.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, I wouldn't specify specific countries, because if a person is a good immigrant, it doesn't matter where they come from, as long as they have the capacity to integrate into our labour market and into our society. My wife is an immigrant from Vietnam, and I'm quite in favour of getting people from all over the world.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In connection with terrorist threats in particular?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, not necessarily, but to the extent people do come from these areas, I think we should be particularly careful in our screening. As I mentioned, because of the resource shortages, the deputy director of CSIS said we only screen 10% of the people. So I think if people are going to come from those countries, we have to screen very carefully and we have to look at the situation very carefully.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure. Fair enough. If you go back far enough, you can look at the huge intake of immigration in the early twentieth century. We needed large numbers of immigrants; we needed large numbers of unskilled immigrants to fill up the west in particular. Then there were periods when we didn't have much immigration.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, on the visitor's visa, they're certainly going to have to check the documents. What I was referring to more was where someone's coming here permanently, as a permanent resident, checking that person's documents. There is a problem in checking the documents of temporary workers because they might also submit fraudulent documents.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No. It used to be fairly standard, but now for resource reasons we just don't do much of it, and I think that should be reinstated. But keeping a Canada-based officer and his family overseas, Mr. Davies, is very expensive. It doesn't come cheaply, and if we're to do it, we've got to provide more resources if we maintain the current levels of immigration.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, we either increase the level of Canada-based staff so we can do a more thorough job of looking at people or we should reduce the numbers to what resources are available. Not be able to do the job adequately is a risk to Canadians, and it's sometimes unfair to the immigrants themselves.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That is true, not just so we know who's in the country who is supposed to have left, but in the case of permanent residents waiting to get their Canadian citizenship, we know a lot of them don't put in the requisite residence period in Canada and claim that they have, and it's very hard to check up.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  All the documents are checked. The question is, though, if you get a document that you think is fraudulent, whether you have the time to follow that up and check with the institution that's supposed to have issued it. I don't think any document goes unchecked. I think to do things as thoroughly as we should, we need to give those visa officers more time.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They will do as good a check as they can, but if you have a fraudulent document, it often takes time if you really want to try to get to the root of the problem. Sometimes visa officers will have to go over to the institution themselves. They certainly will do a visual check of all the documents as best they can, but they do not have time to do as thorough a check as we should be doing, especially with the very high levels of fraudulent documents that are submitted at a lot of our posts in developing countries.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, it is. Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The number would be very small compared to the total flow. I can't give you an exact figure. I did give the example, though, that of 25 identified terrorists—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Were you asking a question? I'm sorry.