It's interesting that you make that point, and I think it's an extremely valid one. We're talking about the speedy removal of foreign nationals, the faster removal of foreign criminals act. Everyone agrees that foreign criminals who have committed serious offences should, if they deserve it, be removed speedily.
The difficulty is that many of the delays we see in the process have nothing to do with what happens at the Immigration and Refugee Board but are delays built in to the other stages in the process. Sometimes a person is convicted and it will take months and months before a report is written under section 44 of IRPA, because there are not enough officers to write reports. Then, if the person is a permanent resident, he's usually called in for an interview, at which he is given the opportunity of making a submission, which is then reviewed by a senior immigration officer.
The witnesses who spoke previously, Mr. Matas, I think it was, talked about all of the delays that are occasioned by the procedures that precede the actual admissibility hearing. Then, sometimes there are delays in admissibility hearings due to the unavailability of minister's representatives.
If you're talking about speedy removal, you need to make sure there are sufficient resources throughout the process. What we see persistently is that many of the delays are part and parcel of an inadequately resourced Canada Border Services Agency.
Before we start talking about eliminating appeal rights as a means of moving people through the system more quickly, the biggest delay, which happens sometimes, is in scheduling appeals. Why do we have delays in scheduling appeals? There aren't enough members to sit on appeals. If we want to have people removed quickly, that could be done if we had sufficient people to hear the appeals.