Thank you, Chair.
Thank you all for your attendance today.
I must say it's rather disappointing to be back in this world again after things were so good on Tuesday. We had an excellent meeting with the passport agency, who had actually listened and acted on recommendations, who were able to show us what they'd done and acknowledged where they'd made mistakes. I mean it was really good, and now we're back to the bad old stuff again.
I'm really disappointed, Mr. Lynch, in your response in particular. I don't think we've ever had a response from a deputy so long and full of such bureaucratese, just filled with stuff that doesn't answer anything. It was very frustrating to read that letter. I have to tell you, I am not impressed at all, particularly—and people know this—when we have audits that go back where things have been found, and then they're not acted on, and then there's another audit and they're not acted on, and another audit. It just makes the blood boil.
There are aspects of this that go back 12 years. Twelve years! If you read your response today, you'd hardly know anything was wrong.
I want to start by dealing with this issue of the mandate. In your letter dated today, where you respond—although it's funny that you never did respond to the Auditor General—you say, and I'm quoting from Mr. Lynch's letter:
Further, commenting on the Immigration and Refugee Board's accumulated backlog and the number of vacancies on the Board, could be interpreted as moving from the mechanics of appointments to the decision to appoint, which is the prerogative of Ministers and the GIC.
Mr. Walsh is here. We have a letter from him. He's our law clerk, our law adviser, top lawyer in the whole organization, and he says, in part:
It seems to me fairly clear that GIC appointments, as a matter of process, fall within the AG's mandate to review from time to time and to report to Parliament, if necessary. The legal fact that the GIC appointment power is done at the exclusive discretion of the Governor in Council does not mean, in my view, that the exercise of this discretion cannot be reviewed, either by the House itself or by the AG on its behalf. It’s all part of the House’s constitutional function of holding the Government to account.
So we've heard your position and we've heard from the parliamentary law clerk. What do you say in response to the law clerk's position?