Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for the question. The ministers are working hard to fulfill their responsibilities and to fulfill the mandates that the Prime Minister gave to them. That includes providing an enhanced and more secure passport for Canadians to reduce the risks of fraud. It also includes putting into place measures — which are in place, are bearing fruit and will continue to bear fruit — to expedite the process for both visas and passport applications.

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): My next question, government leader, is a follow-up to my questions on Thursday regarding changes to our passports. Minister Fraser was at the announcement last week. He is currently presiding over a backlog of more than 2 million applications at the immigration department. As you know, leader, Senator Ataullahjan has recently questioned you about the extremely long wait for visas to visit Canada.

Minister Gould is responsible for Service Canada, which has trouble providing basic services to Canadians, including processing passports. This time last year, they were calling in the police to disperse people camped out overnight in the hopes of getting their passport. In retrospect, we see that the Trudeau government was working at that time to change the passport’s design instead of putting in effort where it was truly needed.

Leader, don’t these ministers have better things to do?