Thank you.
Good morning to you all. Thank you so much for joining us today. It is certainly a pleasure for us to hear from our friends in New Zealand, albeit a little bit far from where we are, but I'm sure with these telecommunications we'll be able to communicate properly.
I have a few questions for you. We're, of course, experiencing some difficulties in dealing with wait times and backlogs of people, processing them through our system. We're trying to make some changes with our proposed Bill C-31.
When the power to designate countries of origin was introduced through the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the minister could designate countries, regions of countries, and classes of nationals. This nuance was in recognition of the fact that safe countries may not be safe for everyone. Bill C-31 amends the power to designate, limiting it to whole countries only.
If your government uses a list of designated countries of origin, must countries be designated as a whole, or do you have distinctions for regions and classes of nationals?