Under IRPA, as I have just said, there are powers for the minister to designate certain countries for specific purposes: countries for which there's a moratorium on removals; countries concerning which we will accept refugee claims in country; countries that have visa requirements or that don't. All of those powers are given to the minister carte blanche in the legislation—by the way, legislation adopted by the previous government, without any kinds of parameters, any safeguards. It's full ministerial discretion.
It's funny, a Conservative government is in place, and all of a sudden people from the previous government say there's too much power for the minister, so we need to limit it. In the spirit of compromise, we say fine. We're not seeking to do anything we think is unreasonable here. What we're seeking to do is provide a limited, discrete ability to address large waves of unfounded claims from demonstratively safe countries that provide protection to their people. In the amendments we're proposing, the process, the committee, which will include outside external membership from human rights NGOs, which will make reference to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which will only look at countries, based on the regulations that we've suggested—and this was an opposition idea—from which have arisen 1% of asylum claims in one of the previous three years.... Only those countries will be considered, and the minister will be bound to accept the committee recommendations. He won't be able to go outside them.
I think this addresses the concerns that we heard from some stakeholders and some parliamentarians about “too much ministerial discretion in the designation process”. It certainly goes a lot further than any other country designations that had been proposed in IRPA by the previous government.