Madam Speaker, I want to commend the member for Elmwood—Transcona for his thoughtful remarks. He is trying to fill the big shoes of his predecessor who brought a lot of common sense to this place, and I think he is doing a good job of it.
In my speech I also remarked on the restrictions on European Jewish refugees before and during the second world war. My colleague is absolutely right. That is a cautionary tale for all of us when dealing with these issues. I am pleased to tell him that our government has launched a project of remembrance and education about the restrictions on Jewish European refugees before and during the war. He may be interested in following up on that.
On the bill, I want to assure the member that the concerns he has raised about the notion of the designation of safe countries are exaggerated. I do not mean to say he is seeking to mislead the House in any respect, but let me explain what this is about.
Most of the western European asylum systems have a process to accelerate the appeals on claims coming from countries that they deem to be generally safe. We are not proposing at all that asylum claimants from designated safe countries be denied access to our asylum system.
We are so generous in Canada that even under these proposed reforms everyone who makes a claim, regardless of whether he or she is coming from a safe country or not, would have an opportunity to put that claim before an independent, highly trained decision maker at an oral hearing on the merits of his or her claim at the IRB in a manner that is totally compliant with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and exceeds our international and domestic legal obligations. There would be no restriction on access to the system for people coming from safe countries of origin.
If an individual is coming from a country where there is a very large number of overwhelmingly unfounded claims, and some of these countries have 98% and 99% rejection rates, the individual would have access to only one appeal and that would be to the Federal Court, rather than two appeals, being the refugee appeal division and the Federal Court.
Having said all of that, I am very open to considering amendments at committee stage to outline in the legislation the criteria for designation of safe countries and to share with the committee draft regulations for the independent and transparent process by which those designations would occur.