Client demand has fluctuated greatly and, as Maître Valois indicated before, there's been a considerable increase recently as a result of several developments. We expect that the numbers of refugee claimants will be going up, particularly because of what is going on in the United States right now.
In Ontario, there has been great concern about being funded adequately because of the increase in numbers of refugee claimants. One thing that could make the system a lot more efficient is to have more immigration and refugee board members, both at the refugee protection division and at the refugee appeal division. It's unacceptable that right now, people are waiting a year for an answer before the refugee appeal division. At the refuge protection division, more and more people's cases are being postponed. This means more money is being spent on lawyers, because you prepare for a hearing, then it's postponed, then it goes back and people have to start preparing again. This is particularly so in Ontario, where the lawyers are paid by the hour. The system is getting bogged down because of the huge number of postponements.
The key to achieving an efficient and effective system is to make sure that the immigration refugee board is well resourced. That will create huge savings for the provinces in the form of fewer people on welfare, and for the federal government—as I mentioned earlier—in the form of fewer people in detention, as well as in many other areas. You don't have to be brilliant to come up with a very simple way of getting costs down throughout the system.