I've been away from it for five years, so I'm probably less informed about this than members of this committee, but my understanding is that they've made considerable strides toward merit-based appointments. The chairperson, Monsieur Fleury, has probably spoken to this committee on this issue. The committee that's established to screen nominees has improved its processes considerably, so there's a better screening, as is happening with a lot of other administrative tribunals.
The problem, as I understand it, is that the committees can make all kinds of recommendations for qualified people; hopefully, they eliminate the patently unqualified, but because there's still a politically based appointment process, there's no guarantee that the most qualified get appointed, and it may be that from the pool of qualified people, marginally qualified are appointed ahead of superbly qualified.
With the appeal division, the proposal that was being developed when I was at the board--and I don't know if it's still the case, but I think it was certainly Monsieur Fleury's preference--was that the membership of the RAD be made up of experienced members, people who'd had experience in the refugee protection division and who had proven themselves to be exceptionally competent. It was a two-tier filtration process, if you will: the initial screening for a merit-based appointment combined with demonstrated skill on the job. One of the reasons was that if the RAD is to do its job properly as a court of second instance dealing with factual cases, it's very important that the members of that division be genuinely expert in country conditions as well as in legal questions. That was the way that issue was going to be addressed.