Thank you very much.
This is really a sad time in the history of the Immigration and Refugee Board. You all used the word “crisis”, and I used that word on Tuesday.
The board makes life and death decisions; families are kept apart; because of incompetence, people are dying. And this is a crisis that is essentially created by the government by trying to reverse a slow evolution of a process that took a while to get there.
I really commend the former chair of the board, Mr. Fleury, for standing up on principle because I think it's critical that the whole process be depoliticized.
I'm also concerned with the security of Canadians, which is the case when those people who should not be in Canada remain in Canada until they get their hearings.
One of the issues that I have always been concerned about—You know, when we appoint people to the bench, they don't have to be reappointed. They serve during a period of good behaviour. I always felt uncomfortable with the reappointment unless you were going to do a probationary period, but after that, if you were appointed for 10 or 15 years or whatever, I think it would be a much better way to go, to keep the political aspects out of it.
When you look at the history, from the inception of the refugee board, I think it's quite well documented by Stevie Cameron as to the kinds of appointments that were made on the board. Stevie Cameron wrote the book On the Take - Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years , and it showed how blatantly politicized the appointments were, where you had ex-wives appointed so that one wouldn't have to pay alimony down the road, and girlfriends were appointed.
I must say that it took a while for the Liberals, once they got in, to clean it up. But the fact of the matter is, it got cleaned up.
Having made those statements, I want you to comment even on the reappointment process. If you are a government—and what this government seems to be doing is trying to put a political stamp on this. If they see a member who is approving a greater percentage than they should be approving, they could very easily refuse to reappoint that member.
It seems to me, if we're going to appoint people, then we should minimize the reappointment process if we're going to make merit-based appointments. And we have to protect them, that they serve during a period of good tenure.
Can each of you comment on that?