Yes. Mr. Nicholson, I thought it was very interesting that you brought up detention and the costs to the system from not having proper representation. That's indeed a reality in the refugee determination process, the immigration system, because there are people who are detained by it. In Montreal, legal aid lawyers are paid $200 for the entire process, including trying to meet their clients, who are held in most cases in Laval—the lawyers would have to get to Laval to see their clients—then coming to the Immigration and Refugee Board for a detention review hearing, and the preparation. You can imagine there are very few. It's extremely difficult to find competent counsel in Montreal who is going to do that for $200.
This means, I believe, that there are many people who are held longer in detention and who might have been able to get out had they had proper representation. That has costs for the federal government, because detention is federal jurisdiction. It's a huge cost, because detention is extremely expensive—whereas in Ontario, you have proper funding tariffs for private lawyers, and you also have the refugee law office, which devotes considerable resources. They actually have a presence in the immigration holding centre, where they get information, find out who is being held, and react very quickly to provide excellent representation.
I can talk about a case in which they set the standard because they're well resourced. Children are being held in detention. It's an absolute disgrace that in Canada children are detained. The way this happens, for the most part, is that you have Canadian-born children and others who are not officially held. Their parents are being held, and they're infants and have nowhere else to go, so they're considered guests. Their interests were not even considered until Legal Aid Ontario and the refugee law office went to court and challenged the decision that said that the best interests of a child who is officially a guest cannot be considered. They went to the Federal Court, and they negotiated with the Minister of Immigration's office. They created a precedent that applies all over Canada, so that now, the best interests of children who are Canadian must be considered as part of the decision-making process. That's an example of how, when you have a well-resourced office and tariffs that are proper, you can have a huge impact all across the country.