First of all, I'd like to congratulate Ms. Sims on her appointment as the critic for immigration and citizenship for the official opposition. I look forward to working with her and all of her colleagues.
I am proud of the compromise that we achieved in Bill C-11 in the last Parliament. I think it was a huge improvement over the status quo. However, we have now seen, since the adoption of that legislation, a continued and growing wave of unfounded asylum claims coming from democratic countries, which represents a fundamental threat to the integrity of our system. Since that time we've seen a growing escalation in the number of unfounded asylum claims coming from Europe. When I say “unfounded”, it's the claimants themselves who indicate that by not showing up for their hearings, in large measure.
So we came to the conclusion that we needed fast and flexible tools to be able to address large waves of unfounded claims from such jurisdictions. That's why we revisited some of the provisions in Bill C-11. This bill, Bill C-31, maintains the basic architecture of Bill C-11. It does maintain the refugee appeal division, which adds an additional procedural safeguard for the vast majority of failed asylum claimants. It does maintain a faster system. The system in Bill C-31 is faster and fairer. The main difference is a streamlined appeals process for people coming from countries that do not normally produce refugees. This reflects normal practice in other liberal democratic countries with respect to their asylum systems.