As you know, we don't believe the minister should have the power centralized for him to be able to designate countries, but here in this particular section we're very concerned that for those who are from designated countries, the bar has been raised for them to 36 months.
It took the NDP a lot, I would say, in the last great compromise to agree to what exists in Bill C-31 right now, which is a 12-month period. But this 36 months is just way over the top and not acceptable to us as well. We do not buy the rationale that this is actually going to do anything for our policy or our image in the world right now.
Canada is a very compassionate country, a very caring country, and here we are now raising the bar higher and higher for certain types of asylum seekers. These are the people we would have already accepted as refugees under the Geneva Convention, and even after accepting them that way we're going to continue to have a two-tiered approach: you're wearing a white shirt today, so you will get this kind of a treatment; you're wearing a yellow shirt, you'll get that kind of a treatment. It's as arbitrary as that.