Senator Ataullahjan: Senator Gold, I like that racism is illegal, but we have to admit it exists. I speak for a community that is regularly stopped for random searches. It’s almost become a joking matter to say, “Okay, I was pulled over. This is what they wanted to know.” My question is how and does the government have a plan to prevent Bill S-7 from being used explicitly to violate the privacy of groups that are already discriminated against by border guards?

Hon. Salma Ataullahjan: Minister Fraser, an Auditor General’s report in 2019 found that 1.2 million calls to your department’s call centre were prevented from reaching an agent. Regrettably, the situation has only become worse.

An answer to a written question on the Senate Order Paper shows that between April and December of last year, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada call centre received over 2.6 million calls and 1.45 million of them were prevented from reaching the wait queue.

Minister, let me repeat that for you. In less than a year, almost 1.5 million calls were dropped, including calls from Canadian citizens, permanent residents and foreign nationals, some of whom are in desperate situations around the world and need your government’s help.

Minister, is that acceptable to you? Service has gone from bad to worse. Can you share with us what you are doing to fix it?