By the way, I'd just like to comment that my son enjoyed his five years with the committee too, so I think there is a mutual love relationship here. Even though he is now with the IRB, I think he misses the committee. There are interesting things going on here all the time.
The Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council is the largest private sponsor in Canada, and we have about 50 constituent groups. We sponsor over 100 people a month. What Hani is saying is that one of the problems is that you need to expedite it. They will have to come through Damascus. It is now taking three to four years. People will not live that long to be able to go through that process. One of the problems has always been that government-sponsored refugees can only be considered if they are referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It has always bothered me that we, and our immigration people, insist on re-interviewing the people who have already been interviewed on the same criteria by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It slows up the process. It delays, and it strikes me that in most cases it is redundant.
What I would suspect, if the Iraqi community is willing to do this, is expediting it--have the UNHCR dossiers there, do a paper screening, and do the medical and the security check without the necessity for re-interviewing, unless there is something missing in the dossier so there is a need for re-interviewing. It strikes me that this is a very inefficient way of doing things.
There is the other possibility of having designated classes again, as we did with the eastern Europeans, but the key element, as Hani points out, is that the situation is urgent. The situation is dangerous for the people. The host governments in both Syria and Jordan are becoming less and less welcoming. The necessity is for speed, expeditiousness, and for the committee to recommend to the government, to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, some expedited way of dealing with the people, particularly those who have relatives here in Canada.