Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think some of this stuff is already in play, according to what I was reading in the Beyond the Border initiative. I think these next-generation teams are quite a monumental leap forward, as far as sharing information. You're sharing more than information; you're sharing resources as well as support—logistical and otherwise.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to the committee.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Let me preface this by saying one thing. One thing I've seen that seems to work—correct me if I'm wrong, but I might have heard that this might be part of the Beyond the Border initiative—is doing joint threat and vulnerability assessments. That, I think, has worked in the past among inter-agency task forces, being allowed to go into different theatres of operation—I'm speaking of the military—and doing joint threat and vulnerability assessments.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not sure, but I do think I remember when I was reviewing the Beyond the Border initiative...I do believe I saw it in there, so it might be part of something that's going to be implemented in the future. I'm not entirely sure it does not happen now, at least not to my knowledge.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, sir.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for that question. I think that's essentially the key issue. You caught it. The embassies abroad are the front lines of the immigration battle or challenge, so to speak. Some of the things we worked with may be a little outdated, since I have been out of the service for a while.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it's improving. Your president has done quite a bit of work to enhance border security, including doing innovative things like these next-generation teams that allow cross-border agents to work on both nations, but my emphasis isn't so much on the border. You have to adjust the security measure to the threat, and if the threat is identified by your own intelligence organizations to be terrorism and Islamic extremism, border controls aren't necessarily the best way to neutralize them—at least that's what we've seen.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sir, that probably would be outside my area of expertise. I never really worked with the visa screening procedures. I don't have any experience with it.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You mean practical measures?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  When it comes to actual technical or practical measures of the pre-screening or the visa screening, I feel that's a little outside my area of expertise. I haven't worked in consular affairs. I worked on the law enforcement side, so I would hesitate to put forth any really practical measures.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, quite a few. In the instances of our southern border, our U.S. Border Patrol has used biometrics quite successfully to deter narco-trafficking. We put a camp along the northern Mexican border. We're constantly travelling to and from the border states—Texas, Arizona, even California—and once we started using more of our biometric capabilities, the correlation between implementing biometric capabilities and arrests of narco-traffickers went up.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One of the studies I looked at very carefully was the study done by the Fraser Institute. The Fraser Institute is probably most well-known for its economic work, particularly its economic freedom index. In this case, it actually did a very lengthy study on immigration security as it relates to terrorism and Islamic extremism.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. I worked also with a group called the Macdonald-Laurier Institute out of Ottawa, another think tank we collaborate with from time to time, and with a couple of friends who work in the business of business continuity.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If an individual is to be identified as a potential threat, I think you'd need two things. You'd need demographic information as well as psychological information to build a full profile on this individual.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Essentially the centre that I direct has a vision, and I think the vision is perfectly aligned with the remarks made in my testimony, which is that security is necessary for prosperity, and that prosperity is therefore necessary for long-lasting security. That's essentially at the heart of the reason why I started my testimony with that quote from Benjamin Franklin.