Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to emphasize once more that most of the individuals who are removed from Canada do not represent a threat to Canadians. The majority are individuals who have requested and have been denied refugee status.
As you can see in Exhibit 7.1 on page 6 of the report, the detentions and removals process is quite complex. It can even take years before a final removal order is issued. You are right when you say that it becomes increasingly difficult over time. These individuals may have families and may be established in Canada. Their situation can be quite heart-wrenching.
The current process is based in part on court decisions. Individuals who enter Canada are protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and are entitled to have due process of law and to appeal any decision handed down by a court.
Regarding the consistency of the decisions, we observed that in different regions of the country, considerable flexibility is used in the application of agency policies. Consequently, an individual may be detained in our region whereas under identical circumstances, he would not be detained elsewhere.
Therefore, in our view, guidelines need to be issued to agency officials to ensure greater consistency in the handling of individuals. The agency's detention capacity may well be a factor. Some regions have the capacity to detain more individuals, whereas others have only very limited capacity. Of course, they can use provincial facilities such as prisons for this purpose. However, we believe that when capacity is limited, individuals are not detained, but rather simply released.