Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Madam Chow, obviously I share your concern about the waiting list for processing of refugee applicants. Obviously one factor here has been the need for more members of the IRB, and I'm taking action in that respect. I've recently made the largest one-day appointment of commissioners to the IRB, and as I mentioned, I anticipate that in the very near future they'll be operating at near full complement with respect to the number of members.
As it relates to their actual detailed operations, I would direct you to the chairman of the IRB to respond to how they are allocating their resources in terms of staff and how they prioritize the processing of claims and appeals.
Clearly part of the problem is the large number of false claimants who are, I would submit, abusing our in-country refugee determination system. This is a very serious problem. I would note, for instance, that last year we received something in the order of 13,000 in-country refugee claims from Mexican citizens, 90% of which are being rejected by the IRB.
So, yes, we need a full complement of IRB judges. We will have that very soon. The IRB needs to administer its resources creatively, but also we need to ensure that we can more expeditiously deal with in-country claimants, particularly from countries where the overwhelming share of those claimants are found to be false claimants. They are clogging up the system, prolonging the waiting times, and making it more difficult for legitimate in-country refugee claimants to get a decision. I invite ideas from the committee on how we can address that very serious problem.