Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 29th, 2007

[Paul Aterman]

People who had experience adjudicating refugee matters in the past are those who could do that job, provided they had the right other attributes.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay. Are you sharing your time with Mr. Wilson?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Yes. We have a motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. Wilson.

[Blair Wilson, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you.

I want to respond to Mr. Devolin's comments. He should take a look at the blues from the discussions this committee had when the Conservatives were in opposition and were fighting in favour of the RAD. So it's not just the minister who's in charge; it seems to be which side of Parliament the party is on.

The parties on the opposition side seem to argue vehemently in favour of the RAD, and whoever is on the government side seems to dismiss it. So I would ask him to look at the words of his colleagues when they were in opposition here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. Gravel, please.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Can we deal with my motion?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I'm just going to complete the table and then we'll do your motion.

Mr. Gravel.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

No. We want to deal with the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I already recognized Mr. Gravel.

Mr. Gravel, go ahead.

[Raymond Gravel, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

I am going to ask a question and make a comment.

How high would the backlog be if there were a sufficient number of commission members to process the applications?

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Earlier on, he said 15,000.

Did you say 15,000?

[Paul Aterman]

Yes, but I would not use the word “backlog”. There are approximately 15,000 files in the inventory. That represents more or less six month's work.

[Raymond Gravel, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Basically, you are about 50 members short. No one has had to pay those salaries. The 7% of the budget thus saved could have been used to open the RAD. Setting up the RAD would not cost any more.

[Paul Aterman]

I would like to remind you that the division would be permanent.

[Raymond Gravel, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Yes, but we have been told that setting it up would cost $4 million and that the annual operating costs would be $2 million.

[Paul Aterman]

The start-up costs are estimated at approximately $8 million, and the annual operating costs would be between $6 and $8 million.

[Raymond Gravel, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Fine. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Is it your wish to deal with the motion? I was going to allow another question from Mr. Siksay.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

No, Mr. Chair, I'm anxious to proceed to the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

The motion comes from Mr. Telegdi, that the chair not receive dilatory motions, and proceed with the meeting as per the agenda and timelines already established at the beginning of the committee meeting.

Is there any discussion? Mr. Jaffer.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I've heard the motion, and I think it's a fair one, but I would like to move a friendly amendment, if possible. I think there needs to be a context to this motion.

I'd like to add as an amendment, “unless there is a need to put more questions to the witnesses relating to the importance of implementing RAD”.

It's clear that if there are dilatory tactics that relate to any other issue outside of what this committee is focusing in on at this time, all members of the committee have a right to be able to call that into question and to overrule any sort of delaying tactics. However, I think it's clear that we haven't given a fair amount of time to this particular issue relating to RAD. We have only had now, I think, this particular meeting in terms of being able to call witnesses on Bill C-280.

The previous effort by my colleague the parliamentary secretary was simply to try to extend the time of the committee so that it could have a few more questions for the previous witness, and all hell seemed to break loose. But in the last round of questioning where we had the witnesses, clearly all opposition members asked questions. All the government members actually allowed them to ask those questions because they were burning questions.

I think it's so important that we consider amending this motion put forward by Mr. Telegdi--

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. McTeague.