Thank you, and thank you, Professor Anker and Mr. Rico-Martinez, for your testimony today.
I want to go to what I think is the heart of the matter here. What I've heard from you today and from the questions that have been asked is basically that the safe third country agreement was put into place and came into force in 2004 in order to reduce the duplication in processing, and possibly to get through a backlog of refugees that Canada may have had. I think that was the intent when it was first put forward, and I believe it was based on the fact that at that point in time, Canada and the United States had roughly the same standards for allowing refugees to come into each one of their countries.
But since that time, your testimony is that things have changed with respect to the policies that the United States is following and that Canada is following, so that there should be an annual review of how consistent the two countries' policies are, and that provided we are applying our standards consistently, then a safe third party agreement would be fair to implement. When the two diverge, that's when we have the problem.
I think where we're at right now is that Canada, or the government of the day, is basically handing over sovereignty and the control of our refugee policy to the United States and basically saying, whatever your policy is, we're willing to accept it carte blanche.
Would that be a fair analysis of the situation?