Thank you, Mr. Chair.
If the minister designates the safe countries, his discretionary power will obviously increase. At any rate, Bill C-11 talked about having a panel of experts. But we have completely moved away from that idea. As the HCR said, the practice of designating safe countries of origin is only a tool used for a procedure. Since it is a tool, we need to have basic qualitative criteria to be able to make decisions on designating safe countries.
As Ms. Sims pointed out and as some witnesses reported to this committee, we also have to consider that some so-called democratic countries do not protect certain segments of their populations, such as transgendered people, lesbians and gays. We also heard Gina's testimony. She belongs to the Roma community and she spoke at great length about how persecuted those people are.
So we are asking the government to support our amendment. Thank you.