Citizenship and Immigration committee  I've had the opportunity to evaluate many members. I actually brought two of my own evaluations with me. We thoroughly evaluate each member just prior to the end of their mandate. The form we have right now is about 45 pages long. It looks broadly at three strokes, which are: kn

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I have very little knowledge. The time I was dealing with Vietnamese boat people was 1990-1994. I was working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and representing them to the appellate-level refugee body, so I was dealing with people who had been denied refugee

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll simply add that we have had representatives from all three levels of government from time to time who observe. The immigration appeal division hearings are public, so anybody at any time can observe them. The RPD hearings, as Mr. Sandhu said, are private, but we can ask coun

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I can tell you, in my region in Toronto, the members are typically assigned six cases a week and they typically finalize four a week. So they're hard-working members, professional to the bone. I would say they put in more than a 40-hour week, typically. With respec

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I have nothing to add, other than to mention, with regard to the new member training mentioned by Mr. Sandhu, that it's a three- to four-week program. We've had that in place for many years. It's actually a world-renowned program. We assign a mentor, following that, to each new m

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, absolutely.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I was going to move on to the second question. You wanted to know about my gender and whether that makes a difference. That's an interesting question. It requires, probably, a bit of reflection. My instinct is that I don't think so. I've seen tremendously compassionate mal

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not exactly certain how to answer your question, because I feel it's certainly not my role to advise the government on how to set up a selection process. We have one that's in place at the moment. From my end of it, I have been on a panel that interviews candidates and deem

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I mentioned, I first became assistant deputy chairperson of the immigration appeal division, and that was in the spring of 2005. I had simply responded to a call for expressions of interest. I'm trying to think back, but I believe we were required to answer three questions. I

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for your questions. With respect to the first, I'm sure this committee knows already that each member is required to make a decision based on the evidence that's before him or her in that case. It's very misleading to look at a broad statistic and make too many assumpt

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I'm sure you know, we have a dual mandate. We have a mandate to be fair. Quality decision-making is our primary goal, but also to be efficient. So the management team always has to take decisions grounded from that mandate. It's our job to inform our chairperson of what dire

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I have an opening statement as well. Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. I immigrated to Canada as an infant, with my parents, from England to Montreal. I grew up in Montreal. I attended CÉGEP. I attended the University of Western Ontario and graduated from it with a