What we proposed in the original Bill C-11 is what's called a bar on concurrent claims. Sometimes people come in on a manifestly false asylum claim and will double their chances: on advice of counsel, they'll file an asylum claim and will file a humanitarian and compassionate claim concurrently. What we've been saying in Bill C-11 is that you have to choose whether you're a refugee or whether you fall outside the definition of a refugee but still believe you have extenuating circumstances that should be considered by an immigration officer through an H and C application. So we said, you choose.
Now, some people have come to us and said, well, people might make the wrong choice. Somebody might end up in the asylum stream, even though the nature of their problem isn't really about persecution, doesn't really meet the statutory definition of a refugee, in which case we shouldn't penalize them but should allow them to move over to the stream in which their claim would be better considered. That would be before an independent, unfettered decision-maker in CIC, on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
I call it a bridging amendment. It allows people who get into the asylum queue to, before their hearing, move over to the humanitarian and compassionate queue. It allows more flexibility to make sure that people, once they have counsel, get into the right stream for their case.