Yes, we are aware of the Harvard study. As far as Colombians are concerned, we don't have the impression that they would necessarily get a better deal here in Canada. Again, it's difficult to take these types of statistics and say, well, if a Colombian came to Canada he would have a 40% chance of being accepted, and in the U.S. it would be 30%. It's difficult to make these comparisons. We consider the U.S. to be a safe country. Otherwise, we would not have agreed to do this monitoring, and we would have said so at the very outset. There are places in the world where we have clearly said that country X is not safe and therefore we would not go along with a safe third country agreement.
Given the nature of the rather developed systems in Canada and the U.S., we have said from day one that both countries are safe. The key is that either one of the two countries is available to asylum-seekers for purposes of status determination. I wouldn't want to necessarily make a judgment, for Colombians or anyone else, about whether there is a bias one way or another. Both countries have good systems, and both countries are indeed safe, so I would stay away from actually making a statistical comparison or a value judgment.
In terms of services, one of the things we have tried to do is to make sure that information about the realities and criteria in connection with safe third countries is available publicly so that asylum seekers don't come to Canada or the U.S. based on false hopes or rumours. NGOs along the border are doing an excellent job, but they have limited capacities in terms of assisting people. The more we can disseminate factual, objective information regarding safe third countries and the criteria that allow people to gain admission to either the U.S. or to Canada, the better. Fewer people will be required to come through the borders and be disappointed.
As far as the overall assessment of safe third countries, as I've said, ours has generally been a positive one. We have made a number of our concerns known--I spelled out a number of those--and the government has fortunately been forthcoming in taking action on those recommendations.