With respect to the question of eight days, we have a few problems with the very idea of an official at the IRB collecting the claim, as opposed to the person putting forward their own claim in their own words. So in our submission, it shouldn't exist. There should be no interview at the IRB within eight days. There could be an interview maybe a few weeks afterwards in order to get the person's address and give them referrals, if that's what the IRB would like to do, or to start talking about when they might be ready to get their claim ready. But that's not something that's needed in the law.
Right now, the IRB in Montreal does pre-hearing interviews in which they just assess the readiness of the person for the hearing, after the personal information form has been submitted. So in our submission, generally speaking, having 28 days to submit the PIF with the assistance of counsel would work. I don't think we need more time than that.
With respect to the 60 days that's been floated for the hearing, I don't think 60 days is practical at all. There may be very unusual occasions on which we have the situation of a client who has a folder of evidence with them when they arrive in Canada, but in most cases the process of collecting evidence to support a refugee claim is something that takes months. The principle, in my submission, ought to be that a refugee claim gets heard when it's ready to be heard, when the evidence is there. You can have a target of say six months, but there has to be some flexibility there so it can be earlier if the person is ready, or later if we're still waiting to get a document out of Somalia or North Korea, from which it takes a very long time to get documents.