By the way, these are not my personal views. I'm presenting the Canadian Bar Association's views. Quite an extensive consultation went into this among the members of the bar.
In any event, we have been concerned about this in a number of pieces of legislation. Just so you know, the process of review of the relevant factors will still happen. It happens now with people who get more than the two-year sentence. It happens by an officer.
The problem with it is that it's difficult for officers to make these decisions, because nobody wants to put their career on the line and make a bad decision; whereas an independent judicial...that's their job. Somebody who is a board member has to weigh the factors. For an officer, it would be a career limiting move to let somebody stay and then have that person reoffend.
We think it's a bad idea to transfer those powers. That's why they created the immigration appeal board in the first place in the 1970s, to take that discretion away from officers and create a more effective system.
Most people working in the system think it is effective. I think the real problem people are concerned about is delays because of volume. I don't know whether 850 a year is a huge volume, but it causes the system to back up, especially if it's not resourced.