Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, as I mentioned, the fact of the matter is that it takes too long for refugee claims to be determined. The current average processing time is over 19 months; it's 19.2 months. I attended the annual meeting of the Canadian Council for Refugees a couple of years ago now, I thi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, that's right: make the right decision first. That's what Ms. Chow said, sotto voce, but I heard her. I guess lawyers aren't supposed to use Latin, but that's a musical term or whatever. Anyway, the fact of the matter is that the key is to make the right decision the first

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's my pleasure. Good luck in your deliberations.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I certainly can't estimate how many cases will be accepted under the new system because I don't know what the mix of claims will be. I can tell you that the acceptance rate in 2009 was 42%, and it was the same figure in 2008. So 42% of all claims that were finalized were accepted

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Once again, each claim is determined on its own merits. And the countries of origin change.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, I believe that figure was provided to you by the minister, but there are a number of components, and we are simply one important recipient of the funding. There are others. In particular, there is the Canada Border Services Agency, so that it can do front-end security scree

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Once again, we are not responsible for policy development, so we weren't consulted about what the policy should be. But as I mentioned, we were certainly consulted about what the implications of any policy choice would be for the board, including what moneys would be required to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Bevilacqua, we have told the government what we need. We have yet to hear what we're going to get. We have a global amount, but we haven't been told what portion of that our portion will be, and over what period of time.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. St-Cyr, since I have been chair I don't believe there have been any competitions for the immigration division, any staffing processes, that have been open to other than public servants. I believe that's so. Now, they have been open to persons employed at the board. Some hav

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That is my understanding. I don't believe there have been any competitions since I have been chair that have been open to persons outside the public service.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think what we want is an appropriate balance, a mix. After all, it is called the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. I think we need a balance in those who make refugee determinations.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, we haven't arrived at that yet. It's really too early in the process to determine that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As you can appreciate, I can't really give you the advice I gave to government because I'm not permitted to do that. What I can tell you is what we were consulted about. We were consulted on the impact on the IRB, what the cost would be of doing this, and generally how we would d

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It is. I'll just say one word about the first question, though. I think you can appreciate that, once again, we do not make government policy. It's CIC and the government that make government policy. So my views as to whether the policies are the right ones or not are not germa

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We've started to give thought to doing it. The fact is that we're a long way from there. First of all, we have to draft a job description. Then we have to have it classified. There's a whole process within the public service for doing these things. Then we have to decide on wha