Thank you, Chair.
Chair, this was a motion that was passed in the last Parliament by the previous standing committee. We had a discussion around accountability for government appointments. There has been concern in the past around appointments in the area of citizenship and immigration, primarily around the Immigration and Refugee Board.
I know the previous government took some measures to improve that process, and that was noted in the discussion we previously had at the committee. But the last committee believed there was room to do an even better job on those things, particularly around having skills and competence-related criteria for each of the positions, so that we had a benchmark to judge the applicants who came before the committee. We thought that having some commentary from the government on how those applicants met the established criteria would also be very important.
I think it was a fairly straightforward attempt to give us the information that we needed to do due diligence on the review of the appointments that came before the committee. As you can tell, it's a general motion—I don't know if there are any crown corporations that apply to our interest in citizenship and immigration—so it was the one that went to a number of committees last time. We passed this and reported it to the House. At one point, I think it even got concurrence in the House as well.
I'd like to suggest that it merits being done again, and I'd recommend it as a process to the government from this committee.