In our brief we recommend sticking to a timeline that more resembles the current 28 days for what's called a personal information form. I heard the witnesses from the previous session talk about 30 days—15 days in our experience working with detainees would be, for many, far too short.
The form has to be submitted in French or English. Many of the people we meet don't have any French or English, or if they do, it's spoken. They certainly can't write. They need to write in Farsi, Tamil, or Arabic, and to find a lawyer.
There's a lot of cynicism about lawyers in all fields. In the refugee field, I say to detainees all the time that the importance of a lawyer is that while they know their own story, the lawyer knows about, for example, what's called a “nexus”—making a nexus with the convention, being able to show the elements of your claim that make it clear that it relates to refugee protection, which is an individualized determination. It's not general. People often misunderstand that. A lot of people see refugees as a catch-all term, but it's a very specific, individualized determination, and 15 days to get those elements on paper is just too short. It's true that 28 days can still be too short, but that's the current system and we feel it's more reasonable.