All right, and thank you for the opportunity to speak before this committee.
I'm going to state first of all that I agree with the brief that the Refugee Lawyers Association has presented, and given that there is so much to speak about in this bill, I'm just going to pick a few topics and not try to cover everything.
I agree with Professor Showler that the most important component of the system is the decision-maker up front. You want to have high-quality decision-making at the outset, which is what's going to ensure the integrity of the system, fair decisions, and efficiency, because decision-makers who are qualified and judicious actually do tend to be more efficient overall.
Although this bill is put forward as one that will reform the refugee determination system, I don't believe it really comes to terms with the whole problem of the appointments process. We're going to continue the existing GIC appointments process in what will be the Refugee Appeal Division, and the appointment process for first-level decision-makers isn't truly set out in a transparent way for Parliament to understand at this point. If the board does wind up, as rumoured, supervising some hiring process through the public service, there are no minimum criteria for the qualifications of people who are hired. Qualifications are very easily claimed without a serious vetting of whether people truly are going to be judicious decision-makers.
I believe that Parliament should come to terms with the issue of ensuring a truly arm's-length committee that does genuinely vet the people who are being appointed. This should be across the board at all levels of appointments to the tribunal. In Ontario, the Ontario Court of Justice has an appointment process that is respected and where the committee is made up of people who are truly at arm's length from government. Then the number of selections presented to government, to the minister, is so limited that there isn't the same kind of scope for not appointing the top candidates, as there is now.
With respect to the proposed process, the first aspect of the process will be an interview conducted at the board. Although it's professed that it should be an eight-day interview, I find it hard to believe that the board will be able to stick to that. We've seen this type of problem before. If it is truly done quickly, then, as Professor Showler has stated, it could be quite unfair.
The desire to control what the claimant states and have their first statement be one made to an official at the hearing I think is problematic. It's going to impair people, particularly the most vulnerable, from disclosing all of their information. I'm concerned about how that will impact on people as they progress through the refugee system.
The appeal system does not allow people to prove that they were telling the truth in the first place. That's a grave limitation. It only allows evidence that's quite limited. You have to basically adopt the same test that exists under the current PRRA, the pre-removal risk assessment model, where people often have been telling the truth, but if it's deemed that they should have known better or could have thought of presenting the evidence before, they're barred from presenting it. I think the purpose of the appeal should be to ensure that the appeal board does get the truth.
With respect to legal aid, at present the government and provinces have a cost-sharing agreement, which has essentially been a compromise that has ensured that legal aid has continued for refugee claimants.
In Ontario last year, about half of the funding for legal aid came from the federal contribution. Legal Aid Ontario is concerned about the cost implications of Bill C-11. Just today, they told me that they're coming up with cost estimates of what they believe Bill C-11 will imply for them, and they seem to believe that costs could go up by 50% from last year's totals.
Right now the cost-sharing agreement is going to expire in March 2011. This new system is clearly going to impose some new costs. Also, the CBSA is going to get substantially more resources and the hearing system is going get more resources, which is going to lead to more need for representation on the other side, and I am concerned that the bill does not balance that out or ensure that the provinces will receive adequate funding or encouragement to continue with their legal aid funding. A mulit-year commitment would be helpful to give greater stability to our provincial legal aid plans.
I'll leave my comments at that and invite questions.