Yes, I do, thank you.
A number of years ago, the Canadian Council for Refugees, Amnesty International, the Canadian Council of Churches, and John Doe brought a case in the Federal Court challenging the Canada-U.S. safe third country agreement. As you know, and as Mr. Coderre knows, in the act right now there's a clear provision saying that you can only designate a country as safe if.... Well, the minister can designate a country that complies with article 33 of the refugee convention, article 3 of the convention against torture, and in coming to that position, the minister needs to take account of the human rights background, the asylum system, and so on.
So we took that case to court and gathered a great deal of evidence, specifically about the U.S. asylum system. Now, of course, the U.S. asylum system is generally a decent one, but does it fully comply all the time with its international legal obligations? Certainly under Mr. Bush, no, it didn't.
We brought that case before the Federal Court. The Federal Court found clearly and unequivocally that the U.S. does not comply with article 3 of CAT, article 33 of the refugee convention. So under those two criteria in the act, the court found that, no, that was a mistake; the designation was inappropriate because the minister said it complies when it doesn't actually.
That case went to the Court of Appeal, and the Court of Appeal found very clearly that the court has no role, essentially, in assessing the decision of the minister with respect to the application of the criteria for designation.
So that's our worry. You may put very decent-sounding criteria into this act about what is a safe country and what isn't. It will look good. It will get passed in Parliament and we will end up with countries being designated for political reasons, for all sorts of reasons, and there will be no review.