Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We drafted this amendment based on the testimony of two witness groups we heard from in committee—the Canadian Council for Refugees and the Inter-Clinic Immigration Working Group. According to those two groups of experts we invited to this committee, the minister should not have the discretionary power to grant an exemption on humanitarian grounds. That exemption should rather be granted automatically when there is evidence of compassionate grounds or under human rights obligations.
In a way, this amendment proposes to reduce the minister's discretion to decide whether to get involved or not. We propose instead that language and knowledge tests be automatically waived on valid compassionate grounds or under human rights obligations.
This is very important to us. The representatives of the two organizations I mentioned made very compelling presentations to this effect. They are very knowledgeable about human rights advocacy and are very familiar with compassionate grounds. We have faith in their expertise in this area. That is why we are proposing an amendment that is in line with those experts' testimony and recommendations.