Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Assadi and Mr. Kale, for being here again.
I have some questions around the safe third country agreement.
I don't know if you're aware of a March 2006 study out of the Harvard Law School that raised some serious concerns about the implementation of the safe third country agreement. One of their concerns in particular was that they felt the safe third country agreement was endangering certain refugee groups. They particularly mentioned Colombian refugees, who, when turned back, face an acceptance rate in the United States that is far different from what it is in Canada. They also noted the declining number of NGO services for refugees at border points--they relate it to the implementation of the safe third country agreement--and raised a concern about increasingly dangerous attempts by individuals to cross the border and circumvent the land border crossings to make a claim once they are within Canada.
Did your monitoring deal with any of these specific concerns raised in this report from Harvard?